There was an article in today’s NY Times, “The Middle Class Is Steadily Eroding.  Just Ask the Business World.” (See also related articles on spending by teenagers and twentysomethings.)  An excerpt:

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.

“Those consumers who have capital like real estate and stocks and are in the top 20 percent are feeling pretty good,” said John G. Maxwell, head of the global retail and consumer practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“As a retailer or restaurant chain, if you’re not at the really high level or the low level, that’s a tough place to be,” Mr. Maxwell said. “You don’t want to be stuck in the middle.”

In 2012, the top 5 percent of earners were responsible for 38 percent of domestic consumption, up from 28 percent in 1995, the researchers found.

Even more striking, the current recovery has been driven almost entirely by the upper crust, according to Mr. Fazzari and Mr. Cynamon. Since 2009, the year the recession ended, inflation-adjusted spending by this top echelon has risen 17 percent, compared with just 1 percent among the bottom 95 percent.

I read the article over lunch and noted it for next week’s Digest.  Charlie Pierce was on it today though and no sense waiting until next weekend to share:

[After] almost 40 years of retrograde economic policy that [has] shoved the nation’s wealth into a smaller and smaller place at the very toppermost of the poppermost… Suddenly, lo and behold, the blog’s First Law Of Economics — Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money — kicks in and, unless, you’re selling yachts, business goes sour because…wait for it…nobody can afford to buy anything! Hoocodanode?

This may be the first country to die of the incredibly obvious.

Hoocodanode.