Originally Posted by PornoMonster

Isn't the Upper class shrinking also??? The amount of people in it??

Originally Posted by woj

You are slightly mistaken, number of "High-net-worth individual" (HNWI, $1m+ net worth) almost doubled since 1999... so quite a few people do in fact move from middle class to the upper class...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HNWI#Capgemini_figures

Originally Posted by tony286

Actually teachers work alot more than that. Papers get graded by themselves?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...xYGS_blog.html
A new report from Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, called Primary Sources: America?s Teachers on the Teaching Profession, finally quantifies just how hard teachers work: 10 hours and 40 minutes a day on average. That?s a 53-hour work week!

These numbers are indicative of teachers? dedication to the profession and their willingness to go above and beyond to meet students? needs. It never was, and certainly isn?t now, a bell-to-bell job.

The 7.5 hours in the classroom are just the starting point. On average, teachers are at school an additional 90 minutes beyond the school day for mentoring, providing after-school help for students, attending staff meetings and collaborating with peers. Teachers then spend another 95 minutes at home grading, preparing classroom activities, and doing other job-related tasks. The workday is even longer for teachers who advise extracurricular clubs and coach sports ?11 hours and 20 minutes, on average. As one Kentucky teacher surveyed put it, ?Our work is never done. We take grading home, stay late, answer phone calls constantly, and lay awake thinking about how to change things to meet student needs.?

Originally Posted by zuffa

Middle class is shrinking because manufacturing is shrinking. We "make" less and less. Hell even I'm guilty of it. Just look at manufacturing in California since 2001.
Here is the SE almost all of the textile business is gone.

Originally Posted by DTK

IMO what's needed is a huge re-investment in our primary and secondary education systems so that we have kids who are really prepared to go to college and get the kinds of good engineering/tech etc jobs that often go unfilled these days.

Originally Posted by Robbie

Are there really high paying high tech jobs that go unfilled?

Back in 2010 CNN did a thing each night where they had ordinary people highlighted with their job resume's. I saw people on there who were damn near rocket scientists who couldn't get jobs.

And in his speech at the DNC...Pres. Obama stated that there are 3 MILLION high tech jobs right now in the U.S. that we just don't have enough educated people to fill.

Really?

So there are just 3 million high tech jobs that companies can't train ANYBODY to do right now? That sounds like some kind of bullshit that was made up and fed to us.

Originally Posted by DTK

IDK about the 3 million number, but overall it's really true. I have bloomberg tv on pretty much every day and business leaders, analysts, economists etc have been saying this for years.

To your last question, I'm not talking about jobs someone with a high school diploma and a little extra training can fill. I mean real, professional level jobs/careers that people can earn solid livings from.

Originally Posted by DTK

We've been moving to a post-manufacturing economy for quite some time. High-tech is where it's at. Unless we want to be a society of hairdressers, waiters and walmart cashiers, that is....