Is the entire foundation of our post WWII economic prosperity

coming crashing before our eyes?The evidence is overwhelming in my opinion.All the professions that form the backbone of our middle class are fighting for survival against the waves of outsourcing to India and China.This outsourcing that started with IT jobs has now spread to legal, accounting, tax preparation, banking, insurance and other service industries which were supposed to take over from the manufacturing jobs that were lost to China.Iam afriad that the glory days of continuing growth of our economy are over and whatever jobs are left are going to be so hammered down by wage cuts, they may not even provide living wages let alone the kind of incomes our middle class has come to expect.

We can certainly thank the Republicans for this destruction of our economic life because it is their ideological blinders that has driven our economy to the ground.

but we can do it

But Democrats are just as much to blame, imo. Or nearly so. They have been complicit in shipping our industry and jobs and even the solvency of the dollar overseas.

We're screwed. Big time.

...the mark of 666 to be a participant. First, render everyone powerless, then demand conversion and acceptance of the mark.

of jobs sent out over the last decades. AAR is key to getting your essay out to the voters by the millions... passive ones will not read DU.

THE LAW
///Simply a law that all doing business here, must have totally US jobforce. Exception being true import goods, from truly foreign companies, allowd to have their overseas citizens as their workforce. I see some clarifications are still needed, but you get the idea.

If enough hear what you wrote, via AAR, we will expand unions and elect officials who will bring the No-outsource Law into being.

PS were unions the only real reason a large middle class came into being early in the 1900's?
Historians , educate me.

destruction and the fanatical ideological blinders makes me want to agree with you.But, even at this late stage, it seems that there is sufficient accountability left in our system that they have to be afraid of. I, of course, do not know any of this.But I have to assume we are still a democracy.Again, I might be wrong.And that wouldn't be the first time.

our federal government is bought and paid for by big business and the massively wealthy ... most of bush's tax cut went to the wealthiest 1% of the population ... environmental regulations have been rolled back ... medicare and social security are hanging by a thread and have been "reworked" to benefit hmo's and the pharmaceutical industry ... workers have been squashed into "huddled masses" ... there are billions or unaccounted for dollars in Iraq ...

and perhaps saddest of all, our media is heavily centralized in the hands of a few very wealthy individuals ...

none of this sounds like there's much accountability to me ...

But I wanted to say that the scramble for votes every four years indicates that at some level the candidates want some legitimacy for their actions.Thats all.

let's hope they keep scrambling, too ...

i think we came dangerously close this year to having the elections get "postponed" ...

Since WWII there has been the housing/baby boom and corresponding consumer ramp-up following the war years. The auto industry, for better or for worse (worse IMHO), provided a solid blue-collar economy through the 60s, along with other manufacturing. The 70s were a little bumpy but the technology revolution took hold from the late 70s through 00.

Now there's no new "new" thing. There's been a lot of false wealth created, built upon mountains of debt and arbitrage.

Take away housing and sprawl and much of the economy is running in reverse. Manufacturing and services will continue their exodus in search of the bottom. What will take their place?

An energy revolution, a transportation revolution, some kind of great new innovation is needed. You cannot have an economy built upon debt and consumer activity.

You honestly can't blame just the Republicans. There is a wholesale inability to think, analyze, and plan by most of our society. We've become addicted getting an awful lot for little investment. There's no free lunch but neither Republican nor Democrat has the guts to look the camera in the eye and say so. Ross Perot came close then evaporated in a cloud of craziness.

Bush broke it up, like an ice flow, the consensus that has been holding the world in a certain model did indeed break up, and in such a way that is destructive to the US worker (and political
opposition to the new feudalism).

Most dangerous of all, IMO, is this massive debt and deficit. The
whole trade balance is held together by other nations buying american
paper, and not even the british empire operated in such fiscally
irresponsible terms. All the countries that bush has pissed off
are now our creditors. There is no virtue in being collectively
in hock up to our eyeballs when the economy crashes.

IF bush steals this election, the only way to recover will be a massive dollar devaluation, on a scale unthinkable today.

Gosh, to fix this mess, will involve both fiscal responsibility
and a massive and intensive round of trustbusting.

here ... put these special glasses on and you'll be able to see the movie ...

the deal is that many multi-national corporations are larger and far more powerful than most countries ... they are their very own "corporate states" ... as they've grown larger and more powerful, they now realize that one of the very few institutions that could ever challenge their power and impose restrictions upon them is the U.S. government ...

and how have they gone about controlling the power of the U.S. government? easy ... first, they "globalized" ... the U.S. government did exactly what bush loves to accuse Kerry of doing and subjugated their power to international treaties like the WTO ... if you think Clinton was one of the good guys, think again ... globalization provided multi-nationals with a ready-made excuse to bypass certain labor practices and certain environmental regulations ...

next came the need to further weaken the U.S. government ... hard to do ?? nope ... just keep spending and spending and spending and when the deficits grow large enough and permanent enough, government will get very, very small ... there will be no money in the budget to regulate and control corporations ...

and finally, just for fun, they're now going after the right to sue ... corporations should not be accountable to anyone for any reason ... that's the motto ...

couple all this with automation, i.e. machines replacing human workers, and the puzzle is complete ... workers will have virtually no bargaining power ...

and do i believe democrats will solve this problem ?? no, i don't ... what good is wallpapering the den while the house is burning down ?? but the democrats want to make an issue out of raising the minimum wage ... maybe they should spend just a little more time raising the minimum rage ...

kerry has a few good ideas about changing the tax code but they don't go far enough ...

that the economic prosperity brought on by WWII is being totally destroyed. Bush is the only president to lose jobs in a war. It has been said that war is great for the economy and well, bush has made the exact oppostie happening.

bush has brazenly brought the corporate program to destroy this country and hand over power to multi-national corporations right out into plain view ... he is by far the most extreme example of this we have ever suffered with ...

but i still think it's important that powerful influences have been taking more and more control over our government for a very long time ... and it's happened under the noses of both democrats and republicans ...

let's hope Kerry is up to the challenge of steering a new direction ... a direction that is more than just anti-bush ... a direction that restores our democracy and returns real power over corporations to the American people ...

interest rates, money supply, etc. is just about gone.The budget and trade deficits have grown so much, debt service now forms a very large
percentage of our budget.Like a guy who keeps making minimum payments on his credit card debts, we will never be able to repay our debtors, China and Japan, in the foreseeable future.All this ideological chest thumping about taxcuts hides the fundamental problem we have: we have gotten accustomed to living beyond our means.Our addiction to war as a means of settling disputes is proving ruinous.

and build our new infrastructure for the 21st century. Out with the old, in with the new, a new century awaits.

We will get through this. Looks bad I know, but we are Americans, filled with ingenuity and the ability to dream and build those dreams into reality. And as you mentioned, we are very smart and talented.

All we need is leadership with vision. We are about to get what we need.