The thing is, it depends on your perspective. Local to America, yes there is a vanishing middle class. Globally, yes there is a lift out of poverty. Ideally w

The thing is, it depends on your perspective. Local to America, yes there is a vanishing middle class. Globally, yes there is a lift out of poverty. Ideally we would see a global lift out of poverty without any local negative impacts re middle/upper classes - everybody rising to the same level instead of some rising and some falling. It's also a lot easier to rise out of poverty when it takes relatively little advancement, and easier to fall into poverty when it takes relatively little loss. I think that aspect of things is often overlooked - poverty doesn't mean the same thing everywhere, and middle class doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. Some areas are rising, but some are falling - as a sum, things are rising. It's the same thing as global warming - yeah, some areas are getting colder instead of warmer and this is pointed to as being evidence of global warming == false, but global warming refers to on average across the whole globe not just a single region. People tend to conflate their local with the global, sometimes because they just miss it and sometimes deliberately.