Yup, totally agree, and I think the improved standards of living in those areas are absolutely a good thing, even if it's changed the way the American economy works. It was never going to be static anyhow. China is starting to produce higher quality products and their standard of living is increasing, too. Their low-end labor has moved to Vietnam, among other places, and hopefully they develop their own mature economy in due time.

I don't think a highschool education is enough to have a high standard of living in the American economy, that fact was pretty much always going to be true with the way the economy has changed. Still, the bottom has fallen out and there's little reason it should have outside of the union busting.

I suppose, had the American unions stayed strong this whole time, this meme might still have been produced, with people still remembering a time when less education was enough to climb higher on the economic ladder.