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" American &amp;quot;business,&amp;quot; a concept that runs from your local pharmacist to Goldman Sachs, which then steals it all and runs away, pronounces itself startled that, having worked diligently at its highest levels to burn the entire house down, it is now difficult to see the TV clearly through all the smoke. As politicians and pundits in Washington continue to spar over whether economic inequality is in fact deepening, in corporate America there really is no debate at all. The post-recession reality is that the customer base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top tier pulls even further away. If there is any doubt, the speed at which companies are adapting to the new consumer landscape serves as very convincing evidence. Within top consulting firms and among Wall Street analysts, the shift is being described with a frankness more often associated with left-wing academics than business experts. Perhaps because the former have been right all along, and the latter have been in the thrall of thieves and mountebanks, and almost 40 years of retrograde economic policy that have shoved the nation&amp;#039;s wealth into a smaller and smaller place at the very toppermost of the poppermost. Suddenly, lo and behold, the blog&amp;#039;s First Law Of Economics -- Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money --kicks in and, unless, you&amp;#039;re selling yachts, business goes sour because...wait for it...nobody can afford to buy anything! Hoocodanode? While spending among the most affluent consumers has managed to propel the economy forward, the sharpening divide is worrying, Mr. Fazzari said. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s going to be hard to maintain strong economic growth with such a large proportion of the population falling behind,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;We might be able to muddle along - but can we really recover?&amp;quot; Mr. Fazzari also said that depending on a relatively small but affluent slice of the population to drive demand makes the economy more volatile, because this group does more discretionary spending that can rise and fall with the stock market, or track seesawing housing prices. The run-up on Wall Street in recent years has only heightened these trends, said Guy Berger, an economist at RBS, who estimates that 50 percent of Americans have no effective participation in the surging stock market, even counting retirement accounts. I don&amp;#039;t mean to be unkind, but isn&amp;#039;t this story rather like sending out a reporter to discover that you cannot buy things with pelts and trinkets any more? That actual money, fiat or otherwise, is usually involved, and that your local Forever 21 doesn&amp;#039;t take chickens for payment? Regardless, affluent shoppers like Mitchell Goldberg, an independent investment manager in Dix Hills, N.Y., say the rising stock market has encouraged people to open their wallets and purses more. &amp;quot;Opulence isn&amp;#039;t back, but we&amp;#039;re spending a little more comfortably,&amp;quot; Mr. Goldberg said. He recently replaced his old Nike golf clubs with Callaway drivers and Adams irons, bought a Samsung tablet for work and traded in his minivan for a sport utility vehicle. Fk off. Die in a sand trap. At street level, the divide is even more stark. Sears and J. C. Penney, retailers whose wares are aimed squarely at middle-class Americans, are both in dire straits. Last month, Sears said it would shutter its flagship store on State Street in downtown Chicago, and J. C. Penney announced the closings of 33 stores and 2,000 layoffs. Loehmann&amp;#039;s, where generations of middle-class shoppers hunted for marked-down designer labels in the famed Back Room, is now being liquidated after three trips to bankruptcy court since 1999. The Loehmann&amp;#039;s store in Chelsea, like all 39 Loehmann&amp;#039;s outlets nationwide, will go dark as soon as the last items sell. Barneys New York, which started in the same location in 1923 before moving to a more luxurious spot on Madison Avenue two decades ago, plans to reopen a store on the site in 2017. This may be the first country to die of the incredibly obvious. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a20259/middle-class-eroding-020314/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_42743609>