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[Warning: an installment of War and Peace follows ...]

Not all of the job loss has been shipping work overseas. A lot of it is automation, which is a mixed blessing.

More and more of the heavy lifting at the factory where I work is automated. By myself, with automation, I can move 32 refrigerators at a time. Or, in shipping, by myself I can band and shrink wrap pallets of four refrigerators and roll the whole wad down the line for a forklift to take out to a waiting semi truck.

Some of these tasks were done by hand by 2, 3 or even 4 people.

Peeps where I work make +/- $10 per hour. I make more, but the low wages are a real drag. Thus, why bring in more illegals? Soon there will be no jobs for them.

Many of my co-workers who start at $8.50 per hour and move up (whoop, whoop! NOT) to $9 or $10 an hour still receive public assistance.

Thus, bringing in more illegals is pointless.

That said ... my BIL is a college professor and his wife is a teacher. She also works part time as a grocery cashier.

My husband just started work at a different factory. Because he is a good worker he will soon be making more than me. We also have a farm.

Our two families together add up to 8 people. We adults have 3 jobs per couple and all of our older kids are working. The younger ones help on the farm of course.

And, guess what. We are all still broke because the price of gas and groceries has sky-rocketed while our wages remain flat and grain prices tend downward.

When we were growing up, a farmer and college prof could have easily supported their whole families.

Putting on my tin-foil hat ... maybe low-wage jobs are a ploy by the government to keep tabs on more people. More on assistance means more under government control :(

However, creativity cannot be automated. I have told the kids to be the guy who programs the robots, not the guy who punches the buttons to run the robot. And keep imagining better ways of doing things.