Gemquest, I'm not sure what you mean. In a culture bent on the adoration and emulation of those who live off the labour of others (which is what it means to be wealthy), any body or any institution that extols the virtues of the working poor is aces in my book.
Radone, we likely were at cross purposes regarding the 'manufacturing versus retail.' I started addressing what I thought was a mischaracterization of the critical theorists' position, and then veered off grind an old axe of mine. I'm veering off a bit more here, but that's because I find these discussions so damned informative - when flameproofed that is!
Is there share of the GDP different now than what it was 30 years ago?
It's less. I'm not sure there's anyone, right or left who would disagree with this. The question is whether this is a bad thing (because equity is a cornerstone of a 'just society'), or a good thing (because cheap labour translates into greater global competitiveness, because scaling back on entitlements leads to increased efficiencies (due to market 'discipline')).
Your other points about actual quality of life are well taken: this is how the inequities of market economies are typically justified. In fact, this is how all hierarchies are justified: disproportionate power is ceded to the few for the benefit of the many. This is one reason why the communist experiment was such a disastrous failure: in place of 'evil capitalists' who at least have some public accountability, you had 'red directors' with no real accountability at all. Social hierarchy is inescapable. The question, as I see it, is one of what kind of system will best reward merit (as opposed to patronage or heredity) with power. I see our present society as just another historical step in that direction; better than what came before, but still quite some distance from where we need to be...
But, in my mind, that is better than no choice which is too often what our anscestors had to bear.
Again, the issue isn't 'Who had it worse?' but rather 'What have we lost?' and 'What do we need to do to recover what we have lost?'
The disagreement is that most wealth is inherited. In fact, about 2/3 to 3/4 of millionaires rose up from the middle class and didn't inherit their money. Most fortunes are squandered within 2 generations.
I always thought the number of 'self-made' millionaires tended to hover around 50%. The real problem, from a
meritocracy standpoint, is that the statistical chances of actually attaining 'the American dream,' plummet the further down you go on the socio-economic ladder. Heredity is of vast importance - it really is. This strikes me as an obvious problem.
I agree with you about teaching household finance (as bad as the polarization of income might be, it's even worse when it comes to assets), though I would argue it's not as important as giving youth the knowledge they need to make rational
political choices - to be citizens, in effect. I mean people don't even know what
money, one of the primary organizing mechanisms of modern society, is, let alone the substantive differences between the left and the right, or the difference between ethical value and market value. There's no democracy without
rational consensus, and very little I see, left or right, seems remotely rational. It's all rhetorical, which is to say, manipulative, because in the absence of knowledge and informal reasoning skills,
that's what works. Take Michael Moore, for instance. As sympathetic to his conclusions as I sometimes am, there's very little that's rational in the path he takes to get to them. Fallacies and emotional appeals, everywhere you turn - it's terrifying when you think about it!
BTW: I always thought that '2 generations' thing was an urban myth. My problem is that I always encounter these statistics in a piecemeal fashion (though I try to be careful when it comes to sources). There's got to be some kind of clearinghouse for social statistics on the web somewhere - does anyone know?
As to whether working 49 hours a week in a job that is unloved leads to despondency, I would guess yes it can. But, I also think that it is not consumerism that is driving the driving force behind all this. I think it is lack of education about how to determine our talents and lack of education on how best to use those talents.
Even if we had the education you speak of, we would still need people to flip burgers, ring in groceries, and pump gas - in short, to give more in the way of goods and services than they receive - wouldn't we? For me, the problem is as much
cultural as anything else (since I believe in free markets). As it stands, the wealthy tend to see themselves, not as the primary beneficiaries of the social weal (which they in fact are), but as the primary
benefactors - and the crazy thing is that the vast majority of the poor agree (such is the power of ideology)! I mean, we live in a culture where welfare recipients are widely regarded as 'parasites,' while 'playboy millionaires,' who simply consume the goods and services provided by others without giving anything in return, are widely seen as the 'hosts.'
good try No-Dog. I haven't been running for cover, but school just started this past week, so I've been rather busy (experiencing my first AP class, so I rather found doing my homework a bit more important than arguing against geniuses 
) and experience a 'euphoria of unhappiness'. This is a circular argument. If I state that more people in the West are happy than at any other time in history because they have more opportunities to explore the world, learn, become educated, become exposed to other cultures (and foods), then the authors would state that these people aren't really happy because their only consuming things and are experiencing a 'euphoria of unhappiness'. It becomes impossible to 'prove' someone's happy when the other guy can always pull out the trump card and say, "It's all just euphoria of unhappiness." 
).
