Middle class is disappearing in cities

The Star-Tribune reports:

In some American central cities, the middle class has nearly vanished. Focusing on 12 cities (including Los Angeles, Baltimore and Philadelphia, but not Minneapolis-St. Paul), Brookings found that only 23 percent of urban neighborhoods could be considered middle-class in 2000, down from 45 percent in 1970.

The implications of both the shrinkage of the middle class and its declining influence in major cities are huge. By concentrating and isolating poverty, the nation invites more crime, more educational underachievement, a lessening of social and economic mobility and a greater likelihood of alienation and political conflict. To outline these concerns is not to incite class warfare, as some would suggest, but to describe realities that the nation cannot continue to ignore.

Future of America isn't going to be places without a middle class.