Notice the article says "typical" without defining the term and "median" as opposed to "average". It's complete fishwrap.
I agree that the word "typical" is meaningless.
I think median is a better measure than average, but in reality, neither is all that descriptive. An average is going to be more skewed by a small number of very high earners. The editorial admits that the difference between the richest people and the median people is greater than it's ever been. If he used averages, the picture would be even more distorted but seem greater.
At some point in middle of the article, he said that the middle 60% of income earners are now making about 46% (I don't remember the exact figure) of the income today as opposed to 52% of the income in both 1975 and 1965. To get a real picture of what's happening, we need to see the exact distributions and not just averages or medians. The statistic about the middle 60% of earners is the closest thing to that kind of information.
Bill