It seems to me that our reps in DC have beaten down the middle class to the point that they are not in the position of living pretty well off. It been done by Both parties and it up to us to pick them out of the lineup and vote them into retirement.
It seems to me that our reps in DC have beaten down the middle class to the point that they are not in the position of living pretty well off.
It seems to me that more people in the middle class have moved into the upper middle or upper income segments of our society than have moved to the lower income segment.
While it may be that the shrinkage of the population who are squarely in the middle income group has decreased, I'm not of a mind to be terribly concerned about it when the fact is that most of those people who no longer are middle income are not "squarely in the middle" because they are financially/economically better off:
- The middle class went from being 62% of the population to 43% of it. That's a 19% drop.
- The lower income segment went from being 10% to 9%. That's a 1% drop.
- The upper income group went from being 29% of the population to 49% of the population. That's a 20% increase. It's not hard to see where it came from. 19% came from the middle class and 1% from the lower income segment of society.
What is so terrible about that? In my mind, not much. What would people griping about the demise of the middle class prefer? That more people remain middle income rather than become upper income?
P.S./Edit:
One anecdotal indicator of the fact that the nation is better off: when greedy people in fact have sufficient amounts of money, they "***** and moan" more about all sorts of things, and the "bitching and moaning" quotient in the U.S. has definitely increased over the years. Why does it work out that way? Because one can spend one's resources complaining instead of going to work to earn the/more/enough money to put food on the table and roof over one's head.