It's not quite that simple. There also needs to be demand to create those new job opportunities. I'm all for more people working in highly skilled sectors and g

It's not quite that simple. There also needs to be demand to create those new job opportunities. I'm all for more people working in highly skilled sectors and getting rid of the need for menial labor. The question is: given how the economy works these days, where is the demand for those highly skilled jobs actually going to come from? Most things that actually push the boundaries of what we can do - such as 3D printing, space exploration - have very little effective demand going towards them these days. The one exception may be medical research, I'm just not sure about that. So I agree that society wins if the level of education can be raised and more people work in highly educated sectors. However, this is not going to be some kind of inevitable outcome of the market. The effective demand needs to be there to enable this transition, and there is no automatic market mechanism to make it happen.