The percentage of Americans who are in the middle class nudged to 50%, a recent study by The Pew Research Center has found. For years, the percentage of Americans living the middle class life has been in decline, but the Obama economy has hit especially hard for many. In 1971, 61% of Americans were middle class. According to the Tribune Washington Bureau the event that finally pushed the middle class out of its majority position was the great recession — thanks to Big Government economic policies. These new numbers could give the politicians who preach divisional politics the ammunition they need to pit rich against the poor and preach redistribution (Hello, Bernie Sanders!). “Americans are always kind of reluctant to embrace open-class warfare,” said Patrick Egan, a New York University politics professor. “If more Americans are under the idea of placing themselves at the bottom, you’ll see politicians follow.” In other words, if you think political rhetoric is divisive now, just wait until the next presidential cycle. Furthermore, this most recent dispatch on the decline of the middle class should be very interesting to social conservatives, as the Tribune noted that the rise of single parent families in the ‘70s led to more poor Americans. Other social issues that affect this economic standing include marriage rates, immigration policy and education, particularly as students reach college age.

All of that is certainly true, but there’s also something of a flip side. According to Reason’s Scott Shackford, “[I]t is also true that the proportion of households that are classified as upper class has increased from 14 percent to 21 percent. That is to say, part of the reason that the middle class is disappearing is that they are succeeding and jumping to the next bracket.”