Wal-Martization Of The U.S. Economy

"America was once a place of substantial intergenerational mobility: Sons often did much better than their fathers... The distribution of income in the United States has gone right back to Gilded Age levels of inequality... Over the past generation upward mobility has fallen drastically. Very few children of the lower class are making their way to even moderate affluence... As a general rule, once they've reached their 30s, people don't move up and down the income ladder very much... Business Week attributes this to the 'Wal-Martization' of the economy, the proliferation of dead-end, low-wage jobs and the disappearance of jobs that provide entry to the middle class."