[Southack]

"you seem to forget that you did just that to me - saying that I had claimed that incomes were dropping when I said no such thing..."

Really? What was your claim about salaries, then?!

[dirtboy]

Really? What was your claim about salaries, then?!

I made no claim about salaries, but instead said the middle class was shrinking. For example, discouraged workers who used to hold a middle-class job aren't even reflected in your average salary statistics. The unemployed are not reflected, and when they are re-employed, where will the come back into the wage scale? Most of the folks I've been reading about are taking pay cuts - I was lucky to find something a bit more than I was making before. So an national average number, leaving out the people most impacted by the economic changes, is hardly a reliable indicator that things are hunky-dory for the middle class.