HOPEY-CHANGEY: The Middle Class Is Steadily Eroding. Just Ask the Business World.

In Manhattan, the upscale clothing retailer Barneys will replace the bankrupt discounter Loehmann’s, whose Chelsea store closes in a few weeks. Across the country, Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants are struggling, while fine-dining chains like Capital Grille are thriving. And at General Electric, the increase in demand for high-end dishwashers and refrigerators dwarfs sales growth of mass-market models.

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.

The good news is that some of the loss is due to middle-class people becoming upper-middle-class. That bad news is that others are sliding down.

Plus: “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 predict a change, as new taxes kick in. Also, when the stock market drops, people in the top percentages feel poorer, and that seems to be going on now. This, of course, will cause the economy to do worse, which will probably lead to more calls to increase taxes.