The middle class is disappearing, but a larger proportion of the part that disappears every year becomes better off than worse off. The upper middle class and the working poor are both increasing in size at the expense of the middle class, but the upper middle class is growing more.

The broadcast components of our culture which must appeal to the largest cross-section of society do indeed cater more to the lower end compared to years past, because that is where the largest number of people still are. Without the middle class glue holding the top and bottom together, the center of gravity of popular culture gradually gets lower.

This tends to drown out the first trend I mentioned, the growth of the upper middle class, if you stick to broadcast media like movies, TV, and radio. But when you look at other forms of media which target cultural niches, you'll find the upper end is alive and well.

> larger proportion of the part that disappears every year becomes better off than worse off

I would hardly disagree with that statement.

Larger portion of the middle class gets downgraded not upgraded.

Some parts of their life get better due to advancements we make in science, but all other aspects are worse and worse.

An example can be “property ownership” - the amount of ppl that own property and are part of the middle class is decreasing year over year in developed countries.

We are slowly getting to the point where we can consider our grandparents or parents as millionairs in current standards.

Global inflation slowly kills middle class and no - ppl are not having it better in aspects that actually matter in long term. We are at crisis now.

There are actually numbers for this (that I'm sadly to lazy to look up on my phone), taking fixed inflation adjusted income thresholds, more people are moving into higher than lower brackets out of the shrinking middle, especially if you consider the starting sizes of these groups.

That might be true for developing countries like China but for sure its not the case in Europe and US.

China by itself can skew global average by a huge margin due to sheer amount of ppl living there.

But even in China market observes middle class crisis - slowing down or ppl getting back to lower class.

I wasn't even thinking about the global level, that's on another level of middle class becoming larger and richer :)

Some US data: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-america... (long term, not the headline)

https://www.cato.org/blog/middle-class-shrinking-households-...

The data you show is for up to 2016. More recent market info shows that middle-class property ownership which was once required to be considered as part of middle-class (definition was changed) is rapidly decreasing making it almost impossible to get from lower-class to middle-class and overall removing pretty big percent of people that are currently (by income) put into middle-class (but would not be if we used old definition).

https://www.rismedia.com/2019/09/03/is-middle-class-homeowne...

It doesnt matter how much money you make, if that money cannot buy you a shelter.

You might disagree but next years are only going to make that crisis worse and worse.

And more and more families will be not able to sustain the level of life our parents had - even whwn working 5 times as hard.

The 2nd link has later data. Housing is an arbitrary metric (home ownership is only one aspect of class; it's very us specific - renting is far more normalized in other places; there may be unrelated shifts towards renting, e.g. for millennials supposedly leaving suburbs for the cities), and even with that the article doesn't even quantity a problem - it just points at some expensive cities, and some potential issues, while showing median income is still easily enough to buy a median house, etc. There's no metric according to which middle class is becoming poorer over any reasonable term in it.

And any very recent change was probably caused by pandemic and reaction to it, not a part of some trend.. to revert it, we should stop doing what we were doing for the past year or two :)

Btw iirc price to income ratio in the us is also one of the lowest in developed countries, or on par.

Long term, I think the thinning middle class narrative is closer to being merely humanities grads complaining that they cannot afford to live in NYC and SF, than to any real issue ;)

How can middle class not become poorer if inflation alone is making us able to buy less stuff that matters.

How can you say my grandpa that was able to afford a big house and feed 5 children working alone as grandma was taking care pf the house - was not living in better financial condition than me who makes 3 times as much money as he did but I cannot afford half of what he could…

The current definition of the middle class is constantly changing based on income only - which makes no sense. It should be calculated towards buying power you have.

And buying power over the years for ppl like me and younger only decreases. Thus -> middle class crisis is going to hit the fan like really soon.

It already did in China and its going to hit US too.

All the numbers in the above data are adjusted for inflation.

Anecdotes are not data. According to this (quick google): https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/ inflation adjusted median price increased by about 80-95% since ~1970 (assuming ~25 years per generation for "grandpa"), depending on whether you include the COVID spike. According to this, however: https://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/05/25/the-size-of-... median house size since 1970 increased by ~75%. That both calls "big house" into question, and puts the increase in price into perspective. Also, inflation adjusted income has increased by ~50% in the same time frame: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-.... So, housing has become expensive somewhat faster than income (but by far not 3x that you describe), in part because the houses are now much bigger (and not half the size that you imply for the 3x cost).

To put it more bluntly than in my previous post (and for reference I did not grow up in the USA), the main difference between your US generation and grandpa's, is that yours is far more entitled, while representing a far smaller slice of world economy. And, if my West Coast experience is any indication, the sub-slices of the generation tend to feel more entitled in inverse proportion to their actual economic contribution...

Is it the smart who are successful?

There's a floor on intelligence for most kinds of success. But success constitutes social positioning, and intelligence isn't very directly connected to that.

Being too intelligent seems to be a social disadvantage often and probably success for a lot of people requires hiding their intelligence.

...

Yes?

Yes, but the dumb vote in droves for a buffoonish reality tv star they think will fire enough people in Government so that they don’t have to pay taxes anymore.

The orange one also hates brown people as much as they do and is unafraid to say it out loud.

Also, it’s just a bonus that their reality tv star really, really pisses off those rich educated folks in the city who “look down” them.

I look forward to when not everything is about that man. But we're not there yet, are we?

We are if you want to be. Just stop talking about him and ignore people that do.

I don't exactly want to be, because I haven't come to terms with it, and I'm still worried about it.

Ahh, yes. Ascendant fascism. Soooo boring.

Oh stop it with the pearl clutching; fascism has been ascendant in the US since 1945, le orange man (bad) is just the latest stop on the train ride from Joe McCarthy.

Did you forget about the violent coup attempt on January 6th?

It was just about as competent and deadly as the Beer Hall Putsch.

I think it's pretty naive to think that the only people to vote for, campaign for, and work for Trump were "dumb". Plenty of "smart" people made decisions between supporting, campaigning for, working for, or defending his campaign and administration because the things that are bad about him don't really affect (or benefit) their own interests.

Yes, approximately 2-3% of the population are sociopaths, who are only self-interested.

Another huge portion or of the population really just care about getting wealthy, with litter regard for anything else.

Seriously, if you want to be rich, all you have to do is be somewhat bright and willing to be a Republican political operative.

See Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Green, Sarah Palin, etc.

I’ve see it myself: some of the dumbest folks I went to school with are killing it in the GOP. Dumb as rocks.

The bulk of the voters?

Go and talk to them yourself. You’ll see.