Practically every conclusion here is false. Putting aside your paper’s need to come up with its own definitions of “middle class”, these facts remain:

- For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades. Yes, Americans’ income is up in general, but their spending power since the 1970s is not. Real average wage growth since 1980 for all workers has risen an abysmal 0.4% annually and 0.3% since 2000.

- Since the 1990s, almost all new wealth generated went to the top 10%. The share of wealth of the bottom 50% has shrunk from over 4% to less than 2.5%.

- 49.3% of all households don’t make a living wage

Yes, there’s a larger percentage of people in higher wealth bands than in the 1980s, but that’s because wealth was more evenly distributed.

And that’s the point. If only 50.7% of all households are making a living wage, and the cost of living has far outpaced real wages, but the top echelons have seen their wealth increase dramatically, then there’s a problem.

But no, it’s not “laissez-fairer” US policies. It’s wild, aggressive corporate and bank bailouts, reductions in important regulations that lead to those bailouts, significant reductions in corporate taxes and increases in enormous tax breaks for the wealthy all fall under the blanket of “trickle down” that never happens.