A DEFLATIONARY EPOCH:

For starters, notes Manhattan Institute's Scott Winship, the American working class is stable. (His four-part series in Forbes earlier this year dissecting the various arguments and data deployed by inequality-narrative peddlers is well worth a look.) He notes that the rate of increase of median wages of workers has certainly slowed since the 1970s. But that isn't because workers aren't being fairly compensated for their productivity contributions. Rather, he points out, the labor market entered a period of prolonged correction after powerful unions artificially bid up wages for several decades in the post-World War II era. There were other factors too, but realistic calculations show that today's wages, earnings and income -- individual and household -- are stuck at 2000 levels, he says. "That sounds bad, except that in 2000, the American middle class was richer than it had ever been, and essentially the richest middle class in global history," he maintains. [...]

Remarkably, our quality of life has continued to improve. [...]

St. Lawrence University economist Steve Horwitz examined the consumption patterns of Americans post-9/11 in 2014 and found that for virtually every good -- washing machines, computers, cell phones, and so on -- the consumption gap between the rich and poor diminished between 2003 and 2005. 

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