A new report from The Urban Institute shows how despite Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton talk about inequality in America, things are actually getting better for most families. Since 1979, we have more wealthier people and fewer poor and near-poor people. The middle class has become wealthier overall in the past generation, and many people who were once middle class are now upper middle class (and yes, this adjusts for inflation).“Between 1979 and 2014, the upper middle class more than doubled in size, from 12.9 to 29.4 percent,” the report states. “While the share of the rich grew by 1.7 percentage points, there were sizable declines in each of the lower three groups, with the poor and near-poor falling from 24.3 to 19.8 percent, the lower middle class from 23.9 to 17.1 percent, and the middle class from 38.8 to 32.0 percent.”The Urban Institute is nonpartisan, but it was founded by Democrat President Lyndon Johnson and currently run by the former deputy director of Bill Clinton’s National Economic Council.Interestingly, while the shift upward in terms of household economic well-being is across the board, people would be earning even more money if the Urban Institute’s calculations included some key income streams:“As noted in the methodology section,…
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