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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>  So perhaps it is time to stop talking about  
> manufacturing jobs and just talk about jobs and wages and salaries, no  
> matter what the job.

I would submit that this is the very sort of thinking that created the mess 
we are in.  Since the US dollar became the world's reserver currency in 1944 
(Breton Woods) and especially sine the creation of the petrodollar in the 
early 
1970's, the US economy has had an increasing free ride in the world market 
place.  Because our currency must needs be used by other economies and we 
could 
dip our finger in the pie as we chose, we were not strictly under the onus of 
making things of any real value to the folk.   Remember I said "increasingly" 
because we certainly did in the late 40's and 50's.  But because of our pie 
dipping we could afford to give wages and salaries to an increasingly large 
number of drones who produce nothing.  

We have come to view a job as Coordinator of Pontification or Supervisor of 
Sidewalk Coloring as if they were the same as jobs that produce food, 
machinery, buildings.  We are suffering from extreme economic ostioporosis.  
There are 
a few real jobs that produce real goods and services for the folk (and some 
for export) but by far most jobs are fluff, passing about bags of air to one 
another, shuffling papers from one side of the desk to the other, under an 
unassailable indoctrinated belief that they are as real as jobs which 
directly 
produce things useful to the folk.

Having just done 2007's income taxes, I needed to looke up on the table for 
my and Herself's Schedule C's the number to indicate the nature of our 
businesses.  There was column after column of numbers for servicing this, 
coordianting 
that, supervising the other .... and a very scant few entries corresponding 
to making anything.  True enough that most people involved in manufacturing 
do 
not them selves file a schedule C, all the more the pity, says I.

Another indication, more amusing perhaps that accurate, but I am not on the 
'do not call' list.  The calls are down to two or three daily, and what are 
they selling?  Tools?  Food?  Fuel?  Building materials?  Even clothing?  No. 
 
Never.  It's warranties, travel discounts, supplemental insurance policies. 
time 
shares, discounts on cable, credit card offers, .... all fluff and air and 
not a dram of marrow amongst it.

We import the majority of things we sell in the Marts and hardware stores 
from China, we import 17 million barrels of oil a day (at $117 a pop as of 
today), and what do we send them in exchange?    We are in the unenviable 
position 
of having an economy based on other countries shipping us stuff out of habit 
while we have forgotten how to make anything and working as hard as we can to 
decieve ourselves (as in Gene's original article) that it isn't so.

The very last thing we want to do is to talk about jobs irregardless of 
whether it is a bag of air jog or not. When you find yourself in a hole, stop 
digging .... else you will end up in China! 
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