There’s no meat in that sandwich….
…The top piece of bread is stale, and the bottom piece is sliced “too thickly!”
The 2008 Index of Silicon Valley, which was produced this year by Joint Venture (Silicon Valley Network [a public-private partnership] and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation [a nonprofit]) found that from 2002 to 2006, middle-wage ($30K-$80K) jobs fell from 52 to 46 percent of the workforce (a loss of 50,000 middle-wage jobs).
The percentage of higher-end jobs rose slightly from 26 to 27 percent, and the lower-wage jobs expanded from 22 to 27 percent of the workforce. (Do you see a pattern here?) 
According to the authors of the report, the consequences of the shift may undercut the basic mechanism of the Silicon Valley economy by making “upward mobility” (which I like to call “locosimilitude” – or the “appearance” of motion) more difficult.
“If you lose the middle, it’s harder to support the top,” stated Doug Henton, an economist at Collaborative Economics (research and consulting firm in Mountain View that is involved in the preparation of the report). No kidding! It is important to remind some people that gravity is non-negotiable.
I just reminded myself that Humpty Dumpty was one of those people, in Chapter 6 of the Lewis Carroll book, “Through the Looking Glass.” You meet a lot of Humpty Dumpties in Silicon Valley…. Alice tried to “talk sense” to him, but he was doomed.
There are plenty of other goodies in the 2008 Index as well, like where that big bottom slice of bread is coming from….
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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