[parsifal]

You may be right. I don’t know for sure. But what I do know is that we can’t continue to be a nation of stockbrokers and sellers of $5 cups of coffee, and feng shui consultants, and fast food burger flippers, and all the other “frippery” jobs we have degenerated into the last 30 years.

We have shipped our manufacturing base overseas and IMHO, if all we end up doing is making our own stuff and selling our own stuff to ourselves, we’d be better off than what we have allowed to happen.

parsy, who once again says he may be wrong

[Red Dog #1]

It's not so much that we shipped manufacturing overseas as we forced manufacturing out of the U.S. Making the decision to do business in U.S. or another country is a complicated equation. Lower wages are offset by higher shipping cost, increased inventory cost (takes longer to put product on market after manufacture), language/cultural manufacturing troubles (T-shirts with misspelled words that were meant for export can be bought for next to nothing on the streets in Thailand) and of course someone like Chavez deciding to nationalize your investment...the list is almost endless.

It's a serious mistake to view jobs (or capital) as "ours", something that belongs collectively to a nation. Make no mistake it's not your job, my job or our neighbors job. Jobs belong to the men and women that own the business. Leave those that produce alone to the greatest extent feasible and their will be employment.