ARE YOU ON THE RISE -- OR THE SKIDS 

Maybe there is something to intuitive forecasting. For a few years I have had the idea that about 60 percent of the North American population is economically, moving upscale and the other 40 percent is sliding downhill. Figures from the U.S. Congressional Budget Office now validates this assumption.

Workers making less than US$14,266 (C$17, 000) are into a continuing slide unless skills and education are radically upgraded.

The group between US$18,076 (C$21,700) and $22,259 (C$26,700) -the fifth and sixth ten percent bracket - aren't much better off. Their income is growing at such a miniscule rate that it is almost moving backwards when the speed of change elsewhere is considered.

The top 30 percent of the population is moving rapidly ahead, with those at the top moving fastest. The top ten percent of the population (ninth graph level) is shooting ahead at a rate of 27.4 percent which indicates that their $90,000 (C$108,000) income will jump to C$358,000 in just 40 years. Growth rates for the top five percent are even more astronomical. The top one percent are in another galaxy jumping from $304,000 to C$1,500,000 in just thirty years.

This is happening not only in North America, where there are more than a million-and-a-half millionaires, but also in the Orient. The graph shows the close and direct relation between education and economic activity and that the Four Tigers: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, this year will together export more goods than Japan. The Four Tigers and Japan are leading Asia to very high levels of economic activity.

Such disparities provide an ominous warning that if you don't upgrade for the new age, your previous bowl of cherries will become the pits.

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