Elizabeth Warren, Professor of Law at Harvard and currently the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, uses some key statistics to frame what now squeezes American’s middle class. For those who count themselves as middle class, as well as for anyone otherwise who summon compassion from their heart to seek to understand the collective situation of all classes interconnected via the economy, Warren’s argument provides clarity. Warren points out that the fall-behind during economic busts has gotten worse while the surge-ahead during booms has stalled out.

In the boom of the 1960s, for example, median family income jumped by 33% (adjusted for inflation). But the boom of the 2000s resulted in an almost-imperceptible 1.6% increase for the typical family. While Wall Street executives and others who owned lots of stock celebrated how good the recovery was for them, middle class families were left empty-handed. The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s.

Meanwhile, family expenses have kept going up for mortgages and health care. Ergo, families opted to put a second parent into the workforce. But now new expenses were added for child care, the costs of a second car to get to work and higher taxes combined to squeeze families even harder. According to Warren “Families today spend less than they did a generation ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases — but it hasn’t been enough to save them…Through it all, families never asked for a handout from anyone, especially Washington.”

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