Reply #196: Are you talking about your own area

[sharonking21]

or in general? The reason I ask is I think I have perceived the same thing going on here in Texas and I suspect in most places.

Texas is urbanizing and historically I thought that has been associated with diminution of the gaps, but doesn't seem to be operating here, any more anyway.

On an anecdotal level, it looks to me as if the true middle class is getting smaller, with great generational migration going on--the migratory part consisting of about a third of those being socially mobile into the upper middle class and about 2/3 socially mobile downwards.

I note that even the department stores are positioning themselves to be either upscale or downscale--much more so than they were previously.

I see lots of single-family housing built for those with high incomes or moderately high incomes but very little housing built that is for anyone else (except apartments located waaay out from the centers of cities).

We have a public transportation system that is a joke. That means that if people living way out have an emergency with their cars, they can't get to work and are either viewed as "unreliable' or get fired. And because of distance and dispersion, they are unlikely to have someone in the neighborhood that they can ask for a ride.

Our tax structure here puts a much higher personal burden on the working class and the poor than it does on others.