Originally Posted by
Illusions
Well the problem has multiple areas to it.
On one side we have people like Lewk who believe that these people are getting paid what they deserve because they are ignorant, lazy, uneducated, or unskilled, based on what he sees from his personal experiences, however not once has he stated that if a job pays below living wage, there are not going to be highly motivated, educated, skilled and knowledgeable people lining up to fill these positions or carrying them out. Then they also, since they have little actual personal experience in that area, feel like if these people were motivated, educated, skilled, etc. they would move up the corporate ladder quite quickly. Unfortunately a large number of retail stores have similar standard operating procedures where you cannot skip steps in the ladder when moving up, you must have had your current roll for X amount of time (usually six months to a year) before you can be considered for a promotion, and that promotion can only occur when a position becomes available. So if for instance you're the manager of a store, and the next rung up is District Manager, your upward mobility is pretty limited if all the DM's in your area expect to hold their positions for 5 - 10 years or more. Regardless, the pay raise for certain rungs may not be that much more than your current rate if you are really performing that well to be considered for a raise. For instance, some department managers are not making as much as I made per hour when I was working as an entry level Medical Animator, and only a few dollars more per hour than I am in a just-below-management position. Then there is also the fact that raises, and pay grade can be capped based on your job title (imagine the morale hit to hear that you qualified for a higher percentage raise, but it was capped lower due to corporate standards!), or even set based on your own personal performance and not company-wide performance (Well last year your department was up 30% to last year, and this year you're at 35 - 40%, so while you exceeded expectations of 10% last year, now you're meeting them since you established you can do 30 - 40%).
On another side we have the fact that until demand decreases, or we invent robots/machines to do it, we require that people fill these positions, just as much as we demand/require people to be plumbers, mechanics, file clerks, dentists, doctors, professional football players, etc. Also if you want to pay someone, or you want to exclaim that someone should be paid as an unskilled/uneducated labourer, you shouldn't then demand from them skilled labour or educated insight into their job. You want to pay someone to take boxes off a truck, open them, and put them on the shelf for $8 an hour? That's fine, but what is really expected is that they formulate a highly efficient system for unloading the truck, opening the boxes, and putting the items on the shelf, while having a highly informed opinion and knowledge of the product they are stocking, along with a highly personable customer oriented personality with boundless energy and optimism that puts the company before any other life obligations or other jobs that they might have, all the while thinking about how to improve their current efficiency and do their job better.
To be honest, this isn't even all of it, just what I feel like typing/writing up at the moment.
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The center is the middle class, and middle income jobs -- that was responsible for building the world's largest economy, and mobilized millions of working people from poverty into the "American Dream" -- which has been decimated the last decade. The center cannot hold in the new service/retail economy, where the top 1-10% consistently gets richer and everyone else is struggling to keep pace, or gets poorer. 
My comments about productivity, efficiency, and labor market changes aren't "complaints" about innovations or technology - but I am concerned about becoming a two-tiered society, and the repercussions.
