I'm John Batchel with my colleague and friend,

Bernique de Reggie of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,

writing in the Creator's Syndicate about the shrinking middle class.

That's right.

There's a new study by Stephen Rose and Scott Winship,

identifying that the middle class is shrinking.

But, and this is a big butt, this is a very rich crowd. And congratulations,

because not only are they middle class, they're extremely well-to-do middle class. However,

Faranika, a very good evening to you. The shrinking middle class is alarming when you first read it, but please explain what it means. Good evening to you. The shrinking middle class is alarming when you first read it, but please explain

what it means. Good evening to you. Good evening, John. Well, actually, so what's interesting

about the story is that the shrinking middle class has been kind of a theme of the populists on the right

and the populist on the left. Ever since the Pew Research

Center started actually putting out a report of dramatic shrinking, 20% shrinking of the middle

class in their reports. And what this study shows that actually is when you actually measure things correctly, the core middle class,

if you divide all the classes in five groups, the core middle class has shrunk, but just a little bit.

And as you said, while they're shrinking, they're still significantly richer than they were 30 years ago,

since I think the measure is still, since 1979.

But what is more important is that the shrinkage occurred not because they're slumping down, but because actually more of them have joined the upper middle class.

So the upper middle class and the top class has actually gone up quite dramatically

while basically the core middle class and the lower middle class and the lower

income class have actually gone down as a share.

They're just like basically there are fewer people in these categories,

...