Pew Research : The middle class is fast approaching endangered species status in the United States.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The middle class is fast approaching endangered species status in the United States. According to The Pew Charitable Trust’s Stateline, “in all 50 states, the percentage of ‘middle-class’ households—those making between 67 percent and 200 percent of the state’s median income—shrunk between 2000 and 2013. This includes California: even though a recent boom in tech money has arrived, this money hasn’t been distributed along the income spectrum.”

In a nutshell, middle incomes haven’t been rising enough to keep up with rising costs in living: health care, child care, food, and in particular, housing. Stateline reports that “In most states, the growing percentage of households paying 30 percent (the federal standard for housing affordability) or more of their income on housing illustrates that it is increasingly difficult for many American families to make ends meet.”

Decades of Keynesian economics will do that.