You were going pretty well there, tsalta, until you tried to blame sub prime on the lower echelons. That is patently ridiculous, and indicates a dogmatic level of belief that clouds your judgement.
Perhaps we drop the idea that everybody can improve their situation by education or some other method of "self improvement"? If every single man, woman and child went out and earned a PhD, we would still need shelf-packers, barmen, and people to ask if you would like fries with that. It's a painful lesson in life; some people never get paid what they are worth, yet others can never be worth what they are paid.