So this is what the pinched Middle Class is pinched about

the rich are richer, more secure and have infinitely higher buying power and the poor are needier, often more industrious and more deserving.

As I sat in the garden of my apartment, the itinerant workers were laying bricks and cement in the driveway of the yard that has been undergoing repair and renovation these past few weeks. Before that for at least a couple of months they were building a tank in the backyard and then repairing the inter property wall at the back of the property.

Their job is often ear splitting noisy and they seemed raucous and disruptive at first, but now they seem calmer and interactive in a more normal way.

They camp out wherever they work, often for several months, and have slowly encroached a back stairway out of the basement parking lot to set up camp cooking facilities.

They have become allies of my sister and me, against a visiting rowdy black cat who picks fights and beats up on the kittens and cat who we have kinda sorta adopted.

This is what pinches the middle class, is raises of salary and costs directly pinch the constrained resources of the middle class.

So I watched the workers laying down the bricks and cement in the front yard from a tree sheltered bench in the front garden, not having any solutions that I could see.