Production Does Not Equal Jobs

Bush can stop puffing now. Yes, production is up. All that means is each worker is working longer and harder, for just about the same pay.

So, since each worker is doing more, the companies don't have to hire.

Except in manufacturing, which is all going overseas.

In India, they're trained to speak like us. They answer customer service calls in "American" English, and get paid 1/10th what a now-unemployed American earned.

In China, they're beaten if they don't produce enough singing snowmen and barking bedroom slippers. They're fired if they try to demand a living wage or safe work conditions, like those of a now-unemployed American factory worker.

The jobs in this country are no longer in manufacturing. We don't make things in this country anymore; we buy them from "American" corporations who manufacture offshore, where there are no environmental controls or unions.

About 80% of the jobs in this country are in "the service industries." That's mopping and burger flipping, to you and me. That's minimum wage and no benefits, to you and me.

The "service industry," huh? As in "servants?" As in "serfs?"

The middle class in this country is one of the SMALLEST in any industrialized country!

We're heading, full speed, back to feudalism. And nobody's complaining, as long as they can drive through for a Happy Meal at the end of the day.

We're losing our country, our dignity, our inginuity.