Some more data for you mutt,
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/...of-all-income/
Quote:
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The growth at the top came at the expense of middle- and low-income earners. After the top, each quintile of income earners saw their share of income decrease, with the biggest drop among middle income earners. The middle fifth of households took in 14.3% of all income last year, the lowest since 1967 and down from 14.6% in 2010.
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The middle class is not a group of people that remains static and moves up or down. Most people are getting poorer and a very few are becoming much wealthier. That is not a 'shrinking of the middle class', it is a larger divide between wealthy and poor... and the volume of poor is rapidly outpacing the number of wealthy. As a simple matter of arithmetic, that much is known.