ML-Implode News - Decline of the U.S. Middle Class, Both in Reality and Perception

The strange thing is that if we look back to the '80s and '90s, when incomes within the middle-class were diverging rapidly, we see very little change in class identification. The General Social Survey shows that the percent of Americans identifying as working class held steady throughout those decades. Gallup's data indicates that class identification in general held steady all the way up through 2008 -- the sudden increase in the lower class, and the drop in the middle class, happened after the financial crisis and the Great Recession.
Were Americans tricking themselves all that time? Did bubbles in the stock and housing markets distract them from the fact that their incomes had stagnated? Did unsustainable borrowing allow working and lower-class Americans to keep up their consumption levels for a little while, delaying the day of reckoning?... That seems very possible. Another possibility is that class identification is really a measure of risk....
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Whatever the reason, the shift in class identification is real. More and more Americans think of themselves as being on the bottom of the economic totem pole. This may be why politicians are focusing less on economic opportunity and more on fear.

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Decline of the U.S. Middle Class, Both in Reality and Perception