the war on the middle class

Apparently that's the title of a very good book that was recommended to me.

Today at work, I got involved in a conversation with some of the guys in the shop. Now these guys are in their high 40's and some are in their 50's. They have kids in school and college, mortgages, car payments, etc. And they're scared. They're scared that they won't have jobs in the future. The ones that are there now have seen the size of the shop staff drop by over half. Why? Because everyone's trying save money anywhere they can. They're pay is not increasing (some are actually going to be decreasing by 2010), yet their health care premiums, insurance premiums, gas bills, and interest rates are going up. Where is that money going?


It's making someone very rich while making the rest of us very poor. I'm sick of it. I've seen it first hand. My dad has lost more than one job due to outsourcing the work to cheaper labor. What's he supposed to do? He's 57 with no education. And what is my brother supposed to do? He dropped out of high school and never went to college. It's nothing bad about him, he was never a good student, school just wasn't his thing. He's blue collar. So where do blue collar people work anymore? All the manufacturing jobs are in the China, all the tech support jobs are in India.

I was talking to my friend the other day. He's an economist and a hard core capitalist. Although he's somewhat idealistic in that he honestly believes that capitalism promotes strong economies by making people better themselves. He's a fan of outsourcing because it produces a cheaper product. And that the wealth of the few "trickles down" to the many. He believes that America is changing from a manufacturing nation to a tech and management nation.


BULLSHIT.

America doesn't manufacture anything anymore. And that's fucking scary. Not only does this mean that the tens of millions of Americans that can't go to school can't get a good paying factory job. It also means that if someone were to disrupt our trade, we're boned. Imagine, our military is already stretched unbelievably thin. Now what happens if North Korea puts up a blockcade or forces China to stop exporting? We lose everything and we have no safety net.

America is too big to be completely service and managerial oriented. 300 million people and they can't all go to college and get degrees. School isn't for everyone. And even those that go to school can't afford it anymore because tuitions keep sky rocketing.

And as far as trickle down economics are concerned, I have two words: big oil. How can these companies be sporting record profits with oil prices souring through the roof? Where does it start trickling down? Why does the CEO of a company make millions of dollars while the people actually doing the work are scrapping buy with barely anything? Where's this trickle?

I could go on and on. But it would only continue to piss me off.

Sorry for the angry post. This shit just fires me up.