[Choose Ye This Day]

Free Trade DESTROYED the blue collar middle class 25 years ago?

That will come as such a shock to my blue collar middle class neighbors! I'll have to tell them this afternoon when they get back from work.

That will come as a huge shock to all the middle-class blue-collar 401(k) plan participants I speak with every day. Next week, I'll have to tell them: "You don't exist. Your job was destroyed back in 1979, apparently. Wewould have told you earlier, but I just found out last week when some guy on the Internet told me. Sorry."

[Sam the Sham]

25 years ago a blue collar worker without a college education, or maybe not even with a high school diploma could get a job that would allow him to buy a house, a car every three years, go away on vacation, have health insurance, send a kid to college, and retire on a pension. How many non-college educated people who do not have those manufacturing jobs that were plentiful 25 years ago can do that ? Does today's WalMart employee have the kind of socioeconomic security and benefits that a steelworker had then ?

[cowtowney]

thanks for a good laugh