Inequality. All Kinds.

Whatever you think of Bernie Sanders, you have to respect his base message: the 'economic recovery' is a load of shit. The Average Consumer (jeez, what a depressing monicker: Hi, I'm Dave, I'm an Average Consumer!) is, according to all the statistics, doing ever so much better these days.
But I took Statistics 101. And 102. So, think about this for a second:
If I set up a lottery and sell 20 tickets, and the Grand Prize is $100, Second Place is $50, Third is $30 and the "Ticket Holder with the Nicest Bootie in a Pair of Yoga Pants" gets $20, guess what? The Average Redneck Lottery Ticket-Holder makes $20! That's a swell deal, right? Because $200 gets doled out over 20 people, then Mr. Average gets $10.
Except any six year old could tell you that's bullshit. One guy gets a nice chunk of change, two people get a decent little somethin', and Ms. Bootie pockets a sweet twenty spot, except she can't pocket it because yoga pants don't have pockets. That means sixteen people, 80% of the ticket holding world, get two things: Jack,  and Shit.
There is no actual Mr. Average, is there?
Likewise the statistics on the news. Average incomes are up. Average spending is up. Average, average, average. Better term: mean. The sum of a series divided by the number of that series. So when you get hedge fund managers making billions-with-a-B (yep, read it today on Forbes), that kind of skews the average. That means most of us poor dipshits can be slowly sinking, and the average is still going up, because Mr. Hedge Fund is doing o-kizzay.

While I'm bitching, smoking rates are down, too. But I still see plenty of guys who look like this guy, lined up at the Circle-K by my house, counting out pocket change to buy a $6 pack of smokes. I betcha smoking rates on average really are down. But the corollary, follow-up, double or nothin' bet is this: smoking rates have plummeted among the well-off. But take that trod-upon bottom 20%, and I betcha smoking rates are holding steady.
If anybody has any kind of firm numbers, I'd love to see 'em