Inflation over the past years has upended a lot of lives, but with the poor still getting poorer, members the American middle class are also finding their buying power sinking with each passing month, along with the "lower class."
A $100,000 yearly salary doesn't buy today what it did ten years ago (it's lost 27-percent of its value since 2015, according ), it certainly buys less today than 20 years ago (about 40-percent less, so what was worth $100,000 just 20 years ago is worth only $60,000 today thanks to inflation), which is a quick way of explaining why a "six-figure income" is considered middle class in America today.
A new Harris poll indicates that many members of the hundred-thousand-dollar club are in "survival mode," with one out of every three of them saying they're financially distressed.
It's the rising cost of living, accelerated by the high inflation effects of the Biden years, which are still rippling through the US economy.
"Bankrate" analyst Mark Hamrick says you can't escape these effects that eat away at your income even in higher tax brackets, "particularly if you have high rent or a high mortgage payment to make, plus the cost of your property insurance, which has continued to rise
"And then there are those growing healthcare costs" that just seem to spiral upward.
Inflation can cause the price of wholesale goods and services to rise months after inflation sets in, then months after that the retail sector will see prices rise, sometimes again and again.
And Hamrick says the costs of goods will actually "trickle up."
"The result of historically high inflation is historically high prices which are continuing to trickle up."
What may surprise some is the conclusion drawn from a new study from one of Hamrick's colleagues at "Bankrate."
"More than forty-precent of the American public has not received a pay raise in the previous 12 months."