There was a lot of befuddlement about Sanders' appeal on cable news this weekend. This chart is a good place to start if you want to understand why his message is resonating at this moment. washingtonpost.com/business/2020/… 
It shows that in 1985, the median dad could cover 52 weeks of major middle class expenses -- housing, vehicle, health care and education -- on 30 weeks of salary. In 2018, that same basket of goods costs 53 weeks of salary washingtonpost.com/business/2020/…
Households have dealt with this in a variety of ways -- sending additional parents to work is a big one. But they've also been putting off home buying, skimping on health care, skimping on retirement, taking out more debt, etc etc. washingtonpost.com/business/2020/…
But it's never enough, because costs keep going up faster than wages. The vice keeps squeezing tighter. This is all happening, by the way, as the economy's winners in the top 10% are raking in a larger share of the country's riches than ever before. washingtonpost.com/business/2020/…
Here's a fun split-screen: the chart of middle class finances juxtaposed with the share of the country's wealth owned by the top 1% over the same time period. Gee I wonder if these trends are related? washingtonpost.com/business/2020/…
Anyhow Cass' entire project is *really* interesting, I suggest you go read the whole thing for yourselves because there's a lot more in there than what I was able to cover. manhattan-institute.org/reevaluating-p…
Postscript: Cass also ran the numbers for female workers and this stat is just wild: "The data show it was easier for a single female breadwinner to provide for her family in 1985 than it is for a lone male earner today." washingtonpost.com/business/2020/…
PPS: There has been a *lot* of discussion of the merits of Cass' framework today in Econ Twitter, and I suspect we'll see more in the coming days. Cass has spent the day tirelessly responding to critics, and he kind of sums it all up here:
