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This is actually a nice summary of data, not an opinion piece. In contrast I hate hyperbolic statements like "the middle class is vanishing" which pretty much

by Isamu 12y ago

This is actually a nice summary of data, not an opinion piece. In contrast I hate hyperbolic statements like "the middle class is vanishing" which pretty much has to be literally untrue but I can appreciate as an attempt to express something true about the objective difficulties of the middle. I just don't think it helps much to hammer on a rhetoric that is calculated to fog the brain. Good short summaries like this are I think easy to understand and contribute better to a national dialog.

enraged_camel 12y ago
>>In contrast I hate hyperbolic statements like "the middle class is vanishing" which pretty much has to be literally untrue Why does it have to be "literally untrue"?
- mrec 12y ago
  If you took a strictly income- or wealth-based definition of "middle class", which I don't, I suppose the existence of a middle class is tautologous in the same way as "half our schoolchildren are below average".
zaphar 12y ago
It doesn't have to be untrue at all. If you only have two classes then there is no middle class. If the trend is that the middle class is moving toward size 0 while the upper and lower classes are growing or staying the same size then the middle class is indeed vanishing. It's not hyperbolic it's a statement of the current trend. Will the trend continue? Maybe. Maybe not. But pretending the trend can't exist is literally denying reality.
- Isamu 12y ago
  > If the trend is that the middle class is moving toward size 0 while the upper and lower classes are growing I think you've hit on it, there would have to be nobody on the income distribution curve in the middle, between the vast bump of poor on one hand and the smaller bump and long tail of rich on the other hand. But that's not what we have. We have a literal median with most people making money in the middle, and it has gradually shifted higher, but not as quickly as the rich, which is the real problem.
ryandrake 12y ago
I think your argument assumes that economic classes must necessarily be divided into exactly three buckets, therefore there is always something defined as "middle". Obviously there are other ways to define classes that do not result in three distinct classes.

by Isamu 12y ago

enraged_camel 12y ago

>>In contrast I hate hyperbolic statements like "the middle class is vanishing" which pretty much has to be literally untrue Why does it have to be "literally untrue"?

mrec 12y ago
If you took a strictly income- or wealth-based definition of "middle class", which I don't, I suppose the existence of a middle class is tautologous in the same way as "half our schoolchildren are below average".

zaphar 12y ago

It doesn't have to be untrue at all. If you only have two classes then there is no middle class. If the trend is that the middle class is moving toward size 0 while the upper and lower classes are growing or staying the same size then the middle class is indeed vanishing. It's not hyperbolic it's a statement of the current trend. Will the trend continue? Maybe. Maybe not. But pretending the trend can't exist is literally denying reality.

Isamu 12y ago
> If the trend is that the middle class is moving toward size 0 while the upper and lower classes are growing I think you've hit on it, there would have to be nobody on the income distribution curve in the middle, between the vast bump of poor on one hand and the smaller bump and long tail of rich on the other hand. But that's not what we have. We have a literal median with most people making money in the middle, and it has gradually shifted higher, but not as quickly as the rich, which is the real problem.

ryandrake 12y ago

I think your argument assumes that economic classes must necessarily be divided into exactly three buckets, therefore there is always something defined as "middle". Obviously there are other ways to define classes that do not result in three distinct classes.