Michael Bennet: “I quote: P&G's profits boomed with the increasing affluence of middle-class households in the post-World War II economy.…”

“I quote: P&G's profits boomed with the increasing affluence of middle-class households in the post-World War II economy. The story I was just telling. The article starts out by saying: For generations, Procter & Gamble Co.'s growth strategy was focused on developing household staples for the vast American middle class. Now, P&G executives say many of its former middle-market shoppers are trading down to lower-priced goods--widening the pools of have and have-not consumers at the expense of the middle. . . . P&G isn't the only company adjusting its business. A wide swath of American companies is convinced that the consumer market is bifurcating into high and low ends and eroding in the middle. They have begun to alter the way they research, develop and market their products. In other words, they have begun to alter their business plan with the assumption that the middle class is evaporating in this country and that their growth markets are the very richest among us, on the one hand, and the very poorest among us, on the other hand. Let me close on this part by reading near the end of this story: To monitor the evolving American consumer market, P&G executives study the Gini index, a widely accepted measure of income equality that ranges from zero . . . to one. . . . In 2009, the most recent calculation available, [there was] a 20% rise in income disparity over the past 40 years. . . .…”