Fine restaurants, luxury stores and discount stores are thriving. Meanwhile, more casual restaurants and shops are suffering. This can be described as the byproduct of the lower and upper classes taking over our economy, while the middle class slowly declines right before our eyes. John G. Maxwell, head of the global retail and consumer practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: “As a retailer or restaurant chain, if you're not at the really high or low level, it's a tough place to be. You don't want to get stuck in the middle. Middle-class jobs continue to decline, and before we know it, America may be looking at a two-class system instead of a three-class one. The middle class began in 1914, 100 years ago, when Henry Ford began offering five dollars a day to work. in his Ford factory. This raised the standard because in their day it equated to about $120 a day. Ford had difficulty finding reliable employees. He came to the conclusion that if he offered his employees better pay, he would have employees who would care about their jobs. The five dollars a day ended up having major positive impacts on the Ford company. Daily absenteeism dropped from 10% to less than 1%. Replacement hiring dropped from 53,000 in 1913 to just 2,000 in 1915, even though Ford's workforce had grown substantially by then. And production in many departments increased by 50% or more. Henry Ford himself later called $5 Day “the greatest cost-cutting move I ever made.” (Gallagher par. 8). These statistics have shown that paying workers more will save businesses money overall. Other companies followed in Ford's footsteps and began offering employees higher wages, creating what is now known as the paper center... tied to the changing American culture, the creation of modern Detroit." Detroit Free Press. Freep .com, 5 January 2014. Web. 2 April 2014. "Henry Ford's $5 a day revolution." - Press release the numbers: the American middle class is incredibly shrinking." BillMoyerscom. Np, nd Web. 02 April 2014.Moore, Michael. “The Forbes 400 vs. Everybody Else.” MichaelMoore.com. Np, 07 March 2011. Web. 03 April 2014. Suddath, Claire. "The middle class". Time Inc., February 27, 2009. Web. April 2, 2014. Traub, Amy, and Heather C. McGee. Economic Policy and the Future of the Middle Class." An Equal Say And An Equal Chance For All. Np, 06 June 2013. Web. 02 April 2014. "Wealth Inequality." Inequality.org. Np, nd Web. 03 April 2014. " Who is the middle class?" Sociology.com, May 3, 2013. Web. 2014.