On the Larry Kudlow show I saw guests commenting on how the middle class is losing out. Both the liberal and conservative agreed that the middle class has lost $3000 per year during the recent economic recovery, similar to what happened during the "Clinton" recovery. This discussion mystifies me. I don't see how anyone could say that the middle class is worse off financially than when I was young. Back then there were no cell phones. Now most teen-agers seem to have them. My Uncle had a phone in the pickup provided by his employer. The phone system occupied a lot of space, and had a long whip antenna. And it wasn't reliable. When I retired I was making about ten times what experienced engineers were making when I graduated from college. New automobiles cost about ten times what they cost then, and gasoline costs about ten times as much as it did then. Houses have a similar relationship. The biggest negative is that taxes are a larger percentage of income than was the case then, despite the so-called Bush tax cuts. This was brought about by the progressive tax rate structure, so that inflation pushes everyone into higher tax brackets. But, there are a lot of items that are relatively cheaper than they were 40 or 50 years ago. Back then, for example a small screen black and white TV cost about 10% of the average person's annual income. Now a large screen color TV costs only a few hours labor. And back then there was one TV channel, and it was received sporadically, whereas now there are hundreds of channels to choose from. I think it is clear that the middle class is better off than ever before, despite what the spinners we see on the MSM tell us. I recall asking my grandfather about how it was in "the good old days." He replied "These are the good old days."