With President Obama's umpteenth (twentieth, if you're counting) pivot back to jobs and the economy, there has been a lot of trotting out of the concept that meaninful economic recovery must begin with the "middle class". Politicians, economists, and pundits alike have all revived the meme, but almost none are directly addressing that fact the "middle class" has reached the mythical status of unicorns or free health care for all. 

In recent weeks the once proud city of Detroit has been subject to a barrage of embarrassing media reports. The state takeover of the city’s finances and Kwame “The Hip-Hop Mayor” Kilpatrick’s prison sentence have played out on the national stage, bringing bad PR to a city desperately trying to improve its brand. In reality the city has been embarrassing itself for quite some time. This three part blog series seeks to lay out the history behind the epic failure that is Detroit.

Wednesday, in the critical battleground state of Ohio, Paul Ryan spoke about his plan for the 46 million Americans who live in poverty saying that "in this war on poverty, poverty is winning.” With one in six Americans living in poverty, Ryan said that he and Mitt Romney would help them join (or rejoin) the middle class. "Many of those living in poverty today were in the middle class just a few years ago.