Once the majority of Americans became middle class, once their jobs ceased to be manual jobs, then they began to look around and choose to live in a place, in part, because of the weather.

large number of lower-middle class and middle-class Americans struggling to make it paycheck-to-paycheck will be short of discretionary income during the holiday shopping season.

The economists may think it looks like the beginning of a recovery, but until middle-class Americans and those working hard to get into the middle class get their jobs back -- the 3.5 million that they lost under George Bush -- then we don't have an economic recovery,

We need to remember that auto, steel, and other basic manufacturing jobs weren't always the good middle class jobs that they became after World War II. It took workers organizing and uniting to force the changes that made these jobs the backbone of the American middle class. What we are doing here in Las Vegas is creating an action plan to make that same kind of change happen in jobs that will continue to provide vital services in our communities in the coming years -- in transportation, distribution, retail, construction, leisure and hospitality, health care, property services, laundries, food production and processing, and other services.

I think it's going to be one of the biggest middle-class jobs -- collaborators. Collaborators are people who are good at working as part of global knowledge, manufacturing or supply chains.

It's middle-class housing in a lower-class neighborhood that has no transportation network. People have not been willing to pay the prices asked.