Apr
6
2026

Stuck in the Middle With … A Lot of Other People

But that's not bad news. Scott Lincicome plugs a WSJ story:

… and so will I: More Americans Are Breaking Into the Upper Middle Class (WSJ gifted link). After some human-interest anecdotal stuff:

America’s middle class is becoming wealthier as more families scale the economic ladder into higher-earning groups. New research shows that the ranks of the affluent have grown markedly over the last 50 years or so, while the lower rungs of the middle class have shrunk.

In 2024, about 31% of Americans were part of the upper middle class, up from about 10% in 1979, according to a report released this year by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

There is no single, standard definition of middle class, or upper middle class, and what counts as a hefty income in one city can feel paltry in another. The AEI report, by Stephen Rose and Scott Winship, classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class. Households earning more were categorized as rich. The analysis looked just at incomes, not assets such as stocks or real estate.

For all the moaning about a "hollowed out middle class", most honest observers realize that the big changes are caused by people moving up.

That "right-leaning American Enterprise Institute" report is here: The Middle Class Is Shrinking Because of a Booming Upper-Middle Class. The abstract:

Populists on both the political left and right routinely claim that the middle class has been hollowed out. These claims, to the extent they are based on evidence, rely on a relative definition of the middle class, such that if income doubles for every family, the middle class does not grow. Using an absolute definition of the middle class, we find that the “core” middle class has shrunk, but only because more families have become upper-middle class over time. The upper-middle class boomed from 10 percent of families in 1979 to 31 percent in 2024, and its share of income doubled. The share of families whose income left them short of the core middle class fell from 54 percent to 35 percent. Claims of a hollowed-out middle class wrongly reinterpret widespread (if unequal) gains across the income distribution as rising insecurity and declining living standards

The authors point out this marginally coherent 2023 Joe Biden speech, given to the "North America's Building Trades Unions Legislative Conference", containing the usual populist bullshit, which the union guys eagerly consumed:

The President. … I ran for President to rebuild the backbone of America, the middle class; to grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down. Because when the middle class does well, the poor have a ladder up, and the wealthy still do very well. You don't have to worry about them. We all do well. But that's a clear contrast to the other side. They believe the best way to grow the economy is from the top down and then to watch the benefits trickle down to the rest of us.

Audience members. Boo!

The President. No, I'm serious. Think about it. Like many of you, not much trickled down to my dad's kitchen table. For decades, trickle-down economics hollowed out the middle class. Hollowed it out. We rewarded work—wealth not work. Companies moved jobs overseas.

Instead, the AEI report indicates pretty steady, inexorable improvement since 1979, no matter who's "in charge" of the economy. (Sorry, partisans.)

We aren't without problems, of course, but a "hollowed out middle class" ain't one of them.

Also of note:

  • As noted above, we got some problems. At the WSJ, Chris Jacobs points out a biggie: The Democrats’ ObamaCare Quagmire. (WSJ gifted link)

    One has to admire Democrats’ chutzpah. In a recent letter, Ron Wyden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, and 11 of his Democratic colleagues outlined a series of healthcare principles, so the Senate is ready “to take action on these issues the next time” Democrats are governing. The letter amounts to a simultaneous admission of ObamaCare’s failures and promise to go even further the next time Democrats have power.

    To “make health care simpler for families,” the lawmakers would “make sure people can get the insurance they are eligible for through a one-stop shop,” and “simplify and standardize plans and benefits.” ObamaCare already created government-run exchanges to shop for coverage—years after private companies had created comparison-shopping tools online. The law also standardized benefits, imposing new coverage requirements that more than doubled individual insurance premiums in ObamaCare’s first four years. Why are Democrats suggesting policies they enacted in 2010?

    The letter’s vow to “get rid of junk insurance plans” hints at the senators’ true motivation. Democratic lawmakers appear to want to regulate ObamaCare off-ramps like short-term limited-duration plans and catastrophic insurance out of existence. Much as the East German government created the Berlin Wall—officially known as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart—to “protect” people by preventing them from leaving, Democrats want to enact stronger so-called consumer protections that eliminate any exit from the ObamaCare morass.

    So that's something to look forward to in 2027: ObamaCare 2.0, designed by Bernie Sanders and Graham Platner.

  • No Wizards!

    Tornado, balloon, … gotta be a Wizard of Oz reference, right? And isn't it appropriate to have Trump in a hot air balloon?

    But that's the cover story on the May issue of Reason, by Gene Healy, expert on the Imperial Presidency: Trump Realized He Can Just Do Things. Who Can Stop Him? His intro:

    Karl Marx said that when history repeats itself, we're supposed to get tragedy first, then farce. But Donald J. Trump has spent his life flouting all the rules. Why should we expect him to obey the historical dialectic?

    In Trump's two presidencies, farce came first. From the jump, his first turn at the helm was a head-spinning spectacle. He talked like a caudillo crossbred with an insult comic and seemed like a strongman auditioning for the part. In practice, however, Trump proved something of a "low energy" authoritarian. Very few of 45's autocratic fancies—from unilaterally revoking birthright citizenship to"hereby order[ing]" American companies out of China—ever made the transition from tweet to law of the land.

    Trump 1.0 arguably ended up a less imperial president than George W. Bush, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden. Even on COVID-19—a workable excuse for an executive power grab if ever there was one—45 proved the rare president willing to let a good crisis go to waste.

    Midway through Trump's shambolic first term,I warned in these pages that we should count ourselves lucky things hadn't gone worse, and should "set about reimposing limits on the office's powers before a competent authoritarian comes along."

    I never imagined it would be the same guy. And yet it's Trump's second presidency that's delivered a mix of tragedy and genuine peril. Somehow, during the interregnum, Trump discovered you can just do things. In the process, he's revealed just how few meaningful constraints remain against one-man rule.

    It's a long article, and worth your attention. So: "Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

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Last Modified 2026-04-06 9:34 AM EDT