To Please or Not?

A little more than a week ago I was chatting with my DH and mentioned that I had started noticing that people rarely say "Please, Thank You, Or Your Welcome" anymore, not anyone, younger than I nor older than I. I have always tried to say please and thanks, bc I think it is one of the last remaining threads of manners that I grew up with. (And there were several rules that my Step Mom made us follow, such as: no passing gas in public, please excuse yourself and if you are not able to, please say, "please, excuse me"; do not interrupt, softly touch someone on the arm to let them know you would like to speak with them; do not chew with your mouth open and do not talk with your mouth full of food, these go hand in hand and do not need further discussion... just to name a few). When I was a kid, I thought she was just being callous with us, but really she was trying to teach us to be educated in a non formal setting so that we would be able to cope politely and respectfully in life. Another reason to say please and thanks is to show the other person that I do respect, appreciate, and care for them, even if they are strangers they are still God's child. So, to proceed on, I started really listening and watching people as they went about their days, and I mentally noted that only about 10-20% of the people ever said please when asking for something and almost nobody said thank you except for some of the same 10-20% that remembered to say "please". During the actions of my busy day I come across allot of people, young and old, formally educated and not, those making 6 figure incomes and those who live at the poverty level, and the results of my 10-20% were not completely from the affluent end of the scale, those folks also stated their requests without a simple please on a regular basis; and not just to their employees, but to their children and acquaintances. This leads me to think that no longer are parents teaching their children about simple manners and makes me wonder why? Are manners out of fashion? Is it politically correct to be rude? I think that manners are an important part of our civilization and of being civilized (not who has the most technologically advanced cell phone), so I will make it my point to infer please and thank you every chance I get and hopefully those I come in contact with will "get it". ....