quote:Originally posted by MarianLibrarian:
It's true that someone has to do the low-paying jobs, and a family can get by when one parent has a low-paying job and the other has a decent job that provides benefits like insurance for the entire family. But as that article pointed out, those decent jobs in fields like manufacturing are the ones that are disappearing. Bye bye, middle class.
Only in a true Socialist society can you not have a "middle class".
At one time, silversmiths were the best paid trade. How many people do you know in that business anymore? Wheelwrights in the 1800's were consistantly ensured jobs. Not much call for that trade anymore. It used to take a whole fleet of bookkeepers and clerks to keep up with the business records of a corporation. With computers, now it does not take a tenth of the number of workers to do a more accurate job.
Employment in the US moved away from individual family farms and ranches in the early 1900s. It moved to cities and manufacturing. Now it's moving away from manufacturing to high tech. The workers have to move also, or face the consequences.