[searchandrecovery]

Let's see, we've got just a TON of really bad stuff happening and accelerating - some person said you can't have open immigration and a welfare state. Well, baby, how about:
open immigration (supported by the president & dems)
rising welfare & entitlements
rising costs for medicare (oh yea, the drug benny).
H1-B's, illegal Mexicans, outsourcing - all supported and funded at the federal level.
3 million manufacturing jobs gone for good.
a federal bureaucracy that will not ever shrink.
corporate welfare.
farm welfare.
omnibus pork bills.
$87 billion to make iraq back into a third-world country.

Only a couple of things can happen - raise taxes, print more money, cut services, or country goes down the tubes. I just don't think either party will do anything about the coming train wreck.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Let's see, we've got just a TON of really bad stuff happening and accelerating

Please add the following to your list:
-- Illegal Salvadorans (20,000 "youth gang" members in California alone)
-- People on L1 visas (more dangerous to US workers than people on H1Bs because there is no cap on their number and businesses CAN make you train them as your replacements)

If I were the leader of the successor state of a certain water empire, I might recognize that if I forced wages to remain at third world levels for say 200 million of my citizens, by forbidding independent trade unions, restricting internal immigration, tax policy and regulating wages and prices, that I could destroy my chief rival in the world by championing free trade and flooding their market with inexpensive goods until their strategic industries collapsed. All this while allowing prosperity for 80% of my people.

But I'm sure nobody in China would ever think of that. (/sarcasm)