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In 1970, there was still a middle class. Income was distributed according to the classic bell curve. Today, income is strictly bimodal. The lower-income lobe is

In 1970, there was still a middle class. Income was distributed according to the classic bell curve. Today, income is strictly bimodal. The lower-income lobe is the permanent underclass. The ragged tail of the upper class manages assets of ten million dollars or more. Politically, it has been very useful to convince underclass voters that they are middle or even, often, upper class, and get them voting against measures that would benefit the underclass including themselves. Trump supporters helped institute policies that massively benefit the actual upper class, at their own expense.

88913527 4y ago
Household income is a skewed bell curve [0]. Some graphs make it it appear bi-modal because the last few bars will contain larger buckets: in this chart, the last 2 bars represent $50,000 in values where all proceeding values are $5,000 [1]. When looking at the change over time, there is an increasing number of households at the upper end of the curve [2]. [0]: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2015/demo/distribution-of-household-income--2014/_jcr_content/root/responsivegrid/embeddableimage65.coreimg.png/1459361296671/hh-inc-dist.png https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2015/demo/dist... [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Distribution_of_Annual_Household_Income_in_the_United_States_2010.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Distribu... [2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/07/PSDT.07.12_economic_inequality-AppA-00-.png?w=600 https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads...