"The U.S. government has for years "sold" American jobs to the lowest bidder, i.e. by encouraging H1B, L1, and NAFTA VISA's by the millions."
MNJohnnie, NAFTA and the WTO have designed a world where the next coffee maker for your home will be engineered in India, designed in Pakistan and manufactured in China or Europe. Americans will step into the picture unloading the ships, trucking or railing it to central warehouses and then to retail stores.
Twenty years ago, the engineering, designing and maufacture of our coffee pots was done 100% in the US. Some basic raw materials were imported from other countries and EVERYTHING else was done here.
Want to build a brand new home? Look on the Internet, snag your blueprints take them into a local architect for a two hour touch up, this used to be 40 to 60 hour job for the architect, then take them down to the city office for approval to an engineer trained in India.
Where all of the construction materials once came from North America now the World Trade Organization and NAFTA have decided that the world should share in the profits and jobs of manufacturing everything.
The steel plants that used to make the rebar for the foundation are now offshore. The copper mines are now offshore. The gypsum plants are now working at 1/10 the speed they used to because the gypsum is pre-prepared for the papering. The hardwoods now come from South America. Paint chemicals come from South America. LABORERS COME FROM MEXICO and South America!!! These men are willing to work harder and put in more hours each week than you would for three days pay.
Wages have been falling backwards even with inflation taken into account. So, if you are feeling comfortable with your nice clean office job, be damned careful that your boss doesn't hire three more employees for less than you are currently demanding from him.
I do hope you are earning and saving hard cash faster than you are spending it because not too far down the calendar you will be up to your neck in bills that you can't afford to pay UNLESS you make drastic changes in your lifestyle.
Five years from now all of us are going to be in trouble as international corporations who have forgetton about nationalism and only interested in world wide profit gains put the screws to every American looking for a well paying profession.
If you think I'm full of hot air, print this and file it in your file cabinet under BS. Then look at it every April 16th and determine whether you went forward or backward the past year. Determine just what it was that caused you to make gains or suffer losses and engineer the necessary corrections.
Good Luck to you and your family.
The Free Trade Gospel according to Arthur Jensen.
Arthur Jensen: "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?! You think you have merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs! There are no third worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, Euro-dollars, Reichmarks, Rubles, Yen, Pounds and Shekels. It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU. . . WILL. . . ATONE!!
"Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? (pause) You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT, AT&T and Du Pont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They pull up their linear programming charts, statistical analysis and minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do.
"We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a collage of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children, Mr.Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war or famine, oppression or brutality – one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale."
Howard Beale (whispers): "Why me?"
Mr. Jensen: "Why? Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday."
From the motion picture Network, in 1976. A film way ahead of its time. The gospel message of free traitors everywhere.