Part-n-parcel on the road to the Great American Dream (via the Washington Post):

But then there are deeper factors at work. The economy has gotten bigger, but much of that growth hasn’t reached the middle class. Indeed, the top 1 percent grabbed 95 percent of all the gains during the recovery’s first three years. And that’s not even the most depressing part. Even adjusted for household size, real median incomes haven’t increased at all since 1999. That’s right: the middle class hasn’t gotten a raise in 15 years.

Now on that upward mobility journey, one has to forgo the middle class, jump that level, acrobat right into the upper class — no problem.

(Illustration: Pablo Picasso’s ‘Acrobat and Young Harlequin,’ found here).

And dream in bad numbers, says the Post: Median net worth is actually lower, adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1989. Even worse, it’s kept falling during the recovery.
Economics suck.

In the visual context in the lore of Americana, is the middle class — at least in this country for a long time, there’s been a broad position in the life-wealth hierarchy that appeared obtainable by just about any one with walking around sense, and maybe some hint of a work ethic. The American Dream, really, was to at minimum make that middle class.
A good rendition of the whole scheme — from overseas last month, Jana Kasperkevic at the UK’s Guardian:

The American Dream is, in most incarnations, a middle-class phenomenon: House with a white picket fence. A college education. A well-paid job.
These are all traditional signs that you have made it to that comfortable mid-point of American economy.
…
Earlier this week, US Census Bureau found that 45.3 million Americans are still stuck in poverty.
About 14.7 million of them are children.
Average household income hovers around $51,700 – which is how much Americans were earning back in 1995.
Yet even as 14.5 percent of Americans meet the actual definition of living in poverty, only about 7 percent of them will define themselves as lower class.
The definition most of them prefer is lower-middle class.
According to the Pew Research Center, the number of those who define themselves as lower or lower-middle class has gone up to 40 percent in 2014, increasing by 15 percent since 2008.

Ingredients for a cherished aspiration gone way-badly awry.