The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central GOP - the party of the rich

The arrival of the middle class at the center of the American political debate is a long overdue step forward, but Obama and Gingrich steered clear of an ugly truth.

A recent study by MIT professors Frank Levy and Thomas Kochan lays out the staggering task that revitalizing the middle class represents. Rising blue-collar employment after World War II allowed the United States to create what Obama called "the largest middle class and the strongest economy that the world has ever known." Now that those factories have moved en mass overseas, the U. S. faces a far more arduous undertaking.

Reforming profit sharing, unions, higher education, on-the-job training and tax law would create higher-skilled American workers who benefit from company performance along with senior executives. They cite the training, innovation and profit-sharing practices of Wegman's, Cisco and Google as examples.

A study released Monday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the primary cause of income disparity in the U.S. and its 33 other members was technological change. A historic integration of financial and trade markets, fueled by technology, created an unprecedented worldwide demand for highly skilled workers in those fields. As a result, a select group of CEOs, traders and others - the so-called one percent - became fabulously rich fantastically quickly.