<story><title>The Mighty U.S. Consumer Is Struggling</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-08/the-mighty-u-s-consumer-is-struggling</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eanzenberg</author><text>The American middle class is shrinking because the majority are moving into the upper class, while the lower class remains constant. There&amp;#x27;s plenty of reports on this, check out intragenerational financial mobility.</text></item><item><author>eledumb</author><text>Real wages are dead flat for decades, everything else costs more so purchasing power is significantly reduced.    The middle class is shrinking.  For a lot of Americans it&amp;#x27;s a really bad time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>adventured</author><text>Actualy the lower class has expanded by a few percentage points (it&amp;#x27;s not constant) due to the vast immigration of low skill workers from Latin America, while the middle class has (as you noted) been persistently moving up for decades (leading to the upper classes gaining a few percentage points).&lt;p&gt;You can see this represented over the last ~40 years based on the demographics of each bracket. All one has to do is look at the Fed&amp;#x27;s current household reports on race when it comes to wealth and income, which lays all of this out in a clear manner. White and Asian households have heavily moved up out of the middle class, while Hispanic and Black households now dominate the bottom 50% of households on income and wealth. As recently as 1980, the US was only 6% Hispanic demographically. By 2000 that had doubled to 12%, and was at 16% in the 2010 census.&lt;p&gt;Further to this point, the White demographic is now contracting. It&amp;#x27;s primarily the Hispanic demographic where population growth is occurring, and mostly via immigration.&lt;p&gt;The big middle class question for the next 20 or 30 years, is whether the huge influx of people from Latin America into the US will be able to move up over time through education and skill acquisition, and whether Black households will similarly gain.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Mighty U.S. Consumer Is Struggling</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-08/the-mighty-u-s-consumer-is-struggling</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eanzenberg</author><text>The American middle class is shrinking because the majority are moving into the upper class, while the lower class remains constant. There&amp;#x27;s plenty of reports on this, check out intragenerational financial mobility.</text></item><item><author>eledumb</author><text>Real wages are dead flat for decades, everything else costs more so purchasing power is significantly reduced.    The middle class is shrinking.  For a lot of Americans it&amp;#x27;s a really bad time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jorblumesea</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not just about numbers, but also about income disparity. Upper class incomes are increasing faster than the lower and middle class. The upper class is also the only one who see any real income growth from 2000 - 2016, hinting at the underlying issues that the middle class faces. Jobs existing, but they no longer provide real wage growth or advancement opportunities they once did.&lt;p&gt;In general, a wide gulf is forming between the upper and lower classes with the middle class being more aligned with the lower class as opposed to the upper class. If allowed to continue, this will essentially destroy the middle class in the long term, as they will eventually merge into either brackets.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pewresearch.org&amp;#x2F;fact-tank&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;the-american-middle-class-is-stable-in-size-but-losing-ground-financially-to-upper-income-families&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pewresearch.org&amp;#x2F;fact-tank&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;the-america...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>