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"Maybe our citizens need to quit blaming politicians for all their problems and work a little harder if they aren't happy with their economic situation.

The way I see it is at one time the government thought it was a good idea to sell out manufacturing jobs due to the newest, greatest "Information" industry that was upon us. Lots of people went to college to learn how to program computers and were making big dollars. Now THAT is being exported, my question is what is the next BIG thing to employee people? Healthcare?

Maybe our citizens need to quit blaming politicians for all their problems and work a little harder if they aren't happy with their economic situation.

Actually, there is a certain amount of truth to Jeff Head's point here.

If it is wrong (and illegal by federal law) for a company to exploit your next door neighbor and pay him less than the federal minimum wage, then it should be just as wrong to exploit the yellow people in China and the brown people in India.

If the EPA won't allow a company to build a factory to make widgets because it will pollute our air (or they want to add billions of dollars to the cost of the factory to keep the air clean), then why is it right to buy cheap widgets from China and India and turn their air brown and poison their rivers?

If the playing field isn't level, if the people aren't equally free and equally protected, then trade isn't fair.

We pay them so little for their work that they can't possibly buy products that we make. We've decided that clean air and clean water is so important that we won't let industry build factories in this country, but we pay the Chinese and the Indians to poison their rivers and pollute their air so bad that occasionally a bit of their "brown cloud" blows over the Pacific ocean and across the entire north american continent and causes pollution alerts in Atlanta.

Plus we tax our workers and our companies so heavily that they have to earn twice what they need to live just so they can give half of it to the ever expanding government. A government which is growing much more quickly with Bush in the whitehouse and Republicans in the Congress.

And then we wonder why so many Americans are unemployed.

The problem with your logic is that in China, when a tool and die business for example starts up, that government provides it the building, the electricity and raw materials, it does everything to encourage and promote that business. The small businessman in the USA is on his own, he's got to work hard to save up money for a building, and he's going to have all kinds of permits to take out and regulations to follow. Then the government comes after him every step of the way, the IRS is out to get him, OSHA is out to slap big fines if he overlooks one Exit sign or some other minor thing, then there are all kinds of fair labor standards to follow. Not only that our government leaders are going to China to assist that government as much as they can to crush the American businessman's business.