Half of Americans couldn't afford a $1,000 surprise expense regardless of who the president is.

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I'm also unsure how much people realize that, no matter how much you lift up the people in the bottom decile...there is always going to be 10% of the population who are in that bottom decile.

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As a NORMATIVE claim, I don't disagree - society should care about the poorest, and a wealthy, unequal society like our should dedicate great resources and energy to helping them. But as a descriptive claim, it's totally confused. Famously, America does not revolve around the poor.

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There's this kind of ideological leakage that occurs, where the working class are implicitly assumed to be the protagonists of history, and therefore the things happening to the poorest people (and thus those with the greatest claim to being working class) are assumed to matter most in politics.

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You'll say something like "Median incomes have been rising for half a decade, so it's mysterious why everyone thinks the economy is miserable" and people will reply "Okay, but what about the bottom decile?" Guys, the bottom decile is, by definition, a tenth of the population.

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