RLSH700

I don't completely agree with you there. 80% of my family is middle class and only a select few are in manufacturing. Some have run their own small businesses (house rental, recruiting, stores, etc.), others work for the government in many different jobs, others sell items in person or over the internet (they make quite a good living at that I'll add), others get pretty basic jobs at various companies utilizing their different strengths (office jobs primarily), others have physical labor jobs (plumbing, house building, etc.), etc. My observation has been that by each generation, my family is getting higher on the pay scale. When my family first came to America, we were either farmers or barbers. During this time, most of them were lower class, starting with my parents generation, we became middle class through having either a college education, a competitive small business, climbing the ladder through hard work, or some other effort to improve ourselves. We have had our periods that were less than desirable and our failures, but we never gave up hope. Farming is extremely expensive and there isn't much money in it, so instead we folded our tents and used our knowledge about this topic to become accountants, sales people, and other positions to serve those who still work in this field. Others work for large farming businesses and actually get paid quite well and receive good benefits. The fact of the matter is this is still the land of opportunity, so times we just have to accept that the opportunity may not be in what we originally wanted it to be in.