Quote - > Quote - The hundreds of thousands who are newly unemployed each week are near the bottom in terms of income to begin with.

that's not quite true.  again, the jobs i know of that have been cut in my parents area are all middle to upper middle class jobs.  in fact, one person i know of who was laid off was making 15,000 a month.  before bonuses.

It's called a generalization. Obviously there have been some who lost their jobs who were making several hundreds of thousands a year or more and even a handful of executives making much more than that, but the VAST majority who face the near-term prospect of unemployment or are currently unemployed are or were below the average gross income in the US. The small percentage who have been laid off who were above the average gross income are still few enough that they don't bear mentioning.