They once inhabited a vast swath of North America but their numbers have been greatly reduced
= new reply since forum marked as read
Guess what...the levels of poverty and the wealthy have increased too. It's the percentages that matter. 
Poverty has gone up, middle class has gone down, and the upper crust has gone up. Guess where most of the income and wealth has gone?
I'm sure a few more years of rising cost of living increases will fix that. We used to be doing much better but it's just gone downhill and even further thanks to after NAFTA.
Fuck.
I was like huh.. 
fuzzy math.. or Reaganomics - aka same-ole, same-ole..
That's just fucking rich.
Yea that's it! That's exactly why Bernie's doing so well, because most of the middle class have moved up.
What a full fucking mouth full of bullshit.
Jeezus fuck, do you all think everyone is that dense?
Hint: a 2 fer 1 isn't any better when trying to unload your first sack of crap.
Please give us some links to your data or 
.
Sorry, but without a source to back up your preposterous assumptions, you are becoming extremely annoying.
DO NOT GIVE US DATA WITHOUT LINKS TO BACK IT UP. THANK YOU!
that you would attempt to put a positive spin to the OP. And come back to justify your sad reply.
"The MIDDLE CLASS is Shrinking Just about Everywhere in America", New Pew Research Data, Wash. Post, May 11, 2016.
The great shrinking of the middle class that has captured the attention of the nation is not only playing out in troubled regions like the Rust Belt, Appalachia and the Deep South, but in just about every metropolitan area in America, according to a major new analysis by the Pew Research Center. Pew reported in December that a clear majority of American adults no longer live in the middle class, a demographic reality shaped by decades of widening inequality, declining industry and the erosion of financial stability and family-wage jobs.
>But while much of the attention has focused on communities hardest hit by economic declines, the new Pew data, based on metro-level income data since 2000, show that middle-class stagnation is a far broader phenomenon.
The share of adults living in middle-income households has also dwindled in Washington, New York, San Francisco, Atlanta and Denver. It's fallen in smaller Midwestern metros where the middle class has long made up an overwhelming majority of the population. It's withering in coastal tech hubs, in military towns, in college communities, in Sun Belt cities.
The decline of the American middle class is "a pervasive local phenomenon," according to Pew, which analyzed census and American Community Survey data in 229 metros across the country, encompassing about three-quarters of the U.S. population. In 203 of those metros, the share of adults in middle-income households fell from 2000 to 2014.
Pew defines middle-income households here as those making between two-thirds and twice the national median household income. For a three-person household in 2014, that means an income between about $42,000 and $125,000. The fact that median incomes have declined over this same time frame also means that the bar to get into the middle class is actually lower now than it was in 2000. Pew's metro-level data are also adjusted for household size and local cost of living.
The shrinking middle class is in part a reflection of rising income inequality in America, and of the same underlying and uneven economic forces that have fueled the rise of Donald Trump. And as the middle class has been shrinking, median incomes have fallen, too. In 190 of these 229 metros, the median income dropped over this same time.
As the middle class has shrunk, Pew points out, the lower and upper classes in America have grown in size and significance. In some metros, the middle class is dwindling primarily because families are falling out of it and into the lower class. The share of households in this bottom tier has skyrocketed since 2000, for instance, in Goldbsoro, North Carolina, a railroad junction with an Air Force base.
..In only about a quarter of all of these metros does the middle class make up less than a majority of the adult population today. But the largest metros in the country fall into this group, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington. In each of these metros, the middle class is relatively small because the upper-class share of the population is larger than average. These same metros also tend to have wider income inequality, reflecting the broad spectrum of jobs in industries from the low-paying service sector to finance and biotech. As a result, not surprisingly, Pew's data shows that metros with greater income inequality tend to have smaller middle classes. When the income distribution is narrower, on the other hand, more people are likely to be clustered in that middle tier between $42,000 and $125,000. Continued.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/11/the-middle-class-is-shrinking-just-about-everywhere-in-america/ *Includes Video.
This graphic is from the Pew research center, but agrees largely with Census Bureau and BLS data.
So you just need to know US population numbers for 1970 and 2015, which were 200 million and 318 million, respectively, and then do a little math. The graphic heading is "the middle class is shrinking", a statement accurate according when referring to percentages. More shrinkage is due to people bumping up to the upper classes, but the 4% dropping down to the lower income classes is the real concern.
The income numbers looked at are here:
and claim the middle class is increasing.
She will sweep the country !
That's a given...That's not the issue. The issue is the percentage of the population each segment represents.
thanks for posting, great information..
Income, savings and life expectancy are in decline for broad swathes of society.
Income among the middle class is plummeting
...
According to Pew Research, in 1970 $3 of every $10 in income went to upper-income households. Now $5 of every $10 goes to them. The Social Security Administration reports that over half of Americans make less than $30,000 per year. That's less than an appropriate average living wage of $16.87 per hour, as calculated by Alliance for a Just Society.
...
A new study finds nearly a 15-year difference in life expectancy between 40-year-old men among the richest 1 percent and the poorest 1 percent. The gap is 10 years for women. Much of the disparity has arisen in just the past 15 years.
...
In fact, it could be even more than half. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a JP Morgan study's conclusion that "the bottom 80% of households by income lack sufficient savings to cover the type of volatility observed in income and spending." Fewer than one in three 25- to 34-year-olds live in their own homes, a 20 percent drop in just the past 15 years.
Renters are faring even worse. The number of families spending more than half their incomes on rent—the 'severely' cost-burdened renters—has increased by a stunning 50 percent in just ten years. Billionaire Steve Schwarzman, whose company Blackstone has been buying up tens of thousands of homes at rock-bottom prices and then renting them out at exorbitant rates while waiting out the housing market, recently said he finds the growing anger among voters "astonishing."
...
http://www.alternet.org/economy/once-middle-class-millions-are-joining-ranks-disposable-americans
The hurting economy still exists. Perhaps the most telling sign that the U.S. isn't back to normal is the 44.7 million Americans on food stamps. Joe is one of them, something else he never envisioned in his life.
Before the financial crisis there were only 26.3 million people on food stamps"
http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/26/news/economy/middle-class-to-homeless/index.html?sr=cnnmoneybin043016middle-class-to-homeless0900vodtop
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Well, perhaps they can eat the pap that people are trying to feed them about how great things are.
This article doesn't agree with you at all. Why are to pretending that the middle class remains healthy? What's your agenda?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/20/middle-class-charts_n_6507506.html
This is a particularly interesting graph:
where 61% of a population of 200 million is a smaller number than 50% of 318 million. That's the change in middle class numbers from 1970 to 2015, showing an increase of about 38 million to the middle class in the US. That's all I was saying - there has been an increase in number, rather than a decline in number.
You could also look at this:
...and ask what the graphic you posted really means - while the percentage of wealth held by the middle class dropped, the net wealth increased significantly, so did middle class households gain or lose money? I can't tell from either graphic. My neighbor has about the same wealth as me, so we'd be about 50/50 on a percentage graph. If he won the lottery, my percentage share would go way down, but that doesn't say a thing about my actual wealth. A different set of data would be needed if you wanted to know how most people are actually doing.
Not to be too pedantic (though I probably am), but its always important when reading graphs and statistics to understand what you are looking at; these things are manipulated easily to make you think you know something that you don't. I don't mean to beat well intentioned people up here, but my approach is more informed by the RW town I live in, and many arguments with wingers who misunderstand and distort statistics, and erect nonsensical positions on half-baked analysis. Relying on facts is a survival tool.
They did a big piece not long ago about the shrinking middle class. Middle class is defined as those households having an income from 66% to 200% of a median income. As the median income is a measure that can go up or down with the overall health of the economy, "middle class" is a moving target, but still representative of position within an economic population.
I did read that bankrate article the other day, along with one by the guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/25/wealthy-americans-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-income-paying-bills , summarized as "people in the US live paycheck to paycheck, even those making over 100k a year". I don't know what to make of that, but I'm all for any measure building a better safety net or increasing opportunity for the 92 million lower income people in the US.
I'm guess I'm getting lost here. 
class. 
...if the pun was intended.
And I take it you agree with me on the shutting up part. Done for now.
We shall see how long my parents hold out, too!
I thought it was gonna be moderate Republicans! 
if this is true.....what can one possibly say?
