DC Econ: The Numbers Game: How's the Middle Class doing?

What group should we measure in order to discover how the Middle Class is doing in America? We should measure the middle aged middle class. This is because it is these people that are actually working the most. They are mostly not living off of investments and passive income, but rather from their active wages from doing work.
Does it make sense to exclude the elderly when trying to measure the progress of the middle class over time? Yes, because the elderly, are not working as much. Most of the elderly are not living off active income, but rather passive income from investments earlier in their life.
Why does it matter if the composition of the middle class is changing when trying to assess the performance of the economy. The composition of the middle class changing over time matters when trying to assess the performance of the economy because the middle class is not the whole economy. There are still those in the higher class and lower class that need to be accounted for. If you compose the middle class of just the elderly and look at income from wages, of course it will look like the economy is broken. But, if you compose the middle class of those who are actively working full time and their income is from their wages then the economy will not look so broken but beautiful.