'The Decline of the Middle Class'

Barry Ritholtz presents several graphs showing "critical evidence on the decline of the middle class" in recent years, and then remarks:

One final note: Despite the overwhelming data, some people dispute that the middle class has been struggling or that they have suffered any sort of set back in income or purchasing power.

The Brookings Institution’s Scott Winship maintains that “conventional accounts of how the broad middle is doing systematically overstate economic insecurity.” If one wants to argue exactly how far the Middle Class has fallen behind, and make the claim that the MSM has overstated it, well, that is a legitimate debate. I think its a losing argument, but, hey, its hardly incredible to say conventional wisdom overstates something.

On the other hand, the American Enterprise Institute fallaciously makes the less than credible or honest claim that there has been “considerable improvement in material well-being for both the middle class and the poor … over the past three decades.”

This is the sort of statement that you expect from a group that has given up any pretense towards reality. The AEI has moved from intellectually bankrupt to utterly dishonest, and I assume anything I read from them, on any subject, are willful lies, misinformation and propaganda.

As an asset manager, I cannot risk falling into an alternative universe that diverges form reality. That is the sand box AEI plays in. As such, I have been forced to SEQUESTER their nonsense, as their detachment from the real world is an expensive and potentially dangerous money loser for anyone who reads their foolishness. I mostly ignore their idiocy, and suggest you do the same.