Pew Research creates something out of nothing: fooling Financial Times and Naked Capitalism with a particular definition of "Middle Class"

Eugen G Tarnow  December 14 2015 09:14:05 AM

By Eugen Tarnow, Ph.D.
Avalon Business Systems, Inc.
http://AvalonAnalytics.com

D'Israeli, former Prime Minister of England, coined the phrase "Lies, damned lies and statistics".  And Pew Research is a good example, with Financial Times and Naked Capitalism on the band wagon.

According to CNN, there are five ways to define "Middle Class": income, wealth, consumption, aspiration and demographics.

Pew Research decided to use income as its definition.  Within income, CNN includes several ways to define middle class: middle fifth, middle three fifths and Pew's definition ranging from 2/3 to 2 times the median income.

Pew's headline screams out: "The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground" leaking members to those "in economic tiers above and below it".  The Financial Times writes "America’s Middle-class Meltdown: Core shrinks to half of US homes" and Naked Capitalism concludes: "Demise of the US Middle Class Now Official".

If Pew would have chosen a different income based definition of the middle class: the middle fifth or the middle three fifth in income, they would have had no news...

A comment on Naked Capitalism went unpublished despite its motto of "fearless commentary" - they apparently feared this one.
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