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economically disadvantaged. Recent evidence seems to show that rather than narrowing with new advances in technology, this digital divide is actually widening. There were one billion children born in the last decade of the 20th century, and 95% of them were in developing countries with primitive living conditions—in fact, more than one-half of the 1.2 billion children aged six to 11 have never placed a phone call!
Along with this technological gap has come a severe gap in wealth between segments of society, even in the U.S. The top 20% of households, with incomes of $180,000 a year or more, command 80% of the collected wealth in the United States and 49% of the total income earned, and this figure has grown by one-fifth in the past decade, compared with only a 1% growth rate for all households combined. As the world’s leading economy, the United States also leads in widening this internal gap. One out of four children under the age of six now live in poverty, making our child poverty rate the highest in the developed world.
If left to run its course, this gap in knowledge and wealth is expected to polarize nations and create dangers on the world stage, and polarize groups and cultures within our own country, boding ill for cross-cultural relations.
Already, members of this new generation seem to be exhibiting a different set of values than their predecessors. They know more and can access more knowledge than any previous birth cohort, care deeply about some social issues, and have strong beliefs about privacy and rights to information. They are optimistic, but free-thinking and alienated from the formal political structure.
Because of the way they have been taught in school and their use of computers, they do well collaborating with others in small, cross-functional work groups, but tend to disdain close supervision and micro-management. 		They are innovators, and want things to move fast, having little patience for bureaucratic routines or deferred gratification. Because there has been little distinction in their lives between working, learning, and playing (they have done it all in cyberspace), they are hard workers but often prefer to be entrepreneurs or to work from their homes and telecommute.
If the U.S. economy continues to boom for knowledge workers, people who hire them should be prepared for the fact that they may have little attachment to a single employer or career, because so many opportunities are open to them. Employers may have to be prepared to make a number of concessions if they are to retain the “best and the brightest” on their payrolls. It may not be feasible to supervise them in the previously accepted sense. They are accustomed to working in non-hierarchical ways.

Demographics and the Highway Infrastructure

Transportation safety problems at the beginning of the 21st century are still numerous and raise some concerns about the safety of vehicles and the qualifications of drivers, despite much progress in recent years.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, breathtaking changes in transportation have brought about the globalization of the economy, changed the way the world does business with just-in-time delivery, opened economic development to previously remote parts of the United States, helped revitalize American cities, and become one of the engines for unprecedented economic expansion.
Transportation today represents 10% of the total U.S. economy. Twice as many passengers fly today as 25 years ago, vehicle