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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> > I "get" the economy presently
> having its way with us.  BUT, IMHO, jobs will never recover.  Jobs are 
> being
> phased out by technology regardless of the inflated BS of wall street and
> sub prime loans defaulting.

That, certainly, but there's other factors afoot as well.  Starting at 
least as far back as 1970 when the US was the 'swing producer' of oil, the US 
economy as firmly based on mining things, making things, and growing things.  
A good basis!  When US oil peaked as predicted, we began to import more and 
more oil.  About then we also seemed to be carried along on the paradigm and 
began to import all and sundry manufactured items.  We have followed suit 
in the last decade by increasingly importing food.    All this while the 
people who used to be employed in mining, making, and growing things began an 
ever-growing move to "service" jobs ... until over the past couple of decades 
most people are employed in some form of paper shuffling, computer bit 
crunching, coordinating, facilitating, adivsing, counseling, ... all of which 
eventually gave way to an economy based on investing, speculating, and 
gambling.

Now we hear the longing and expectation for the economy to "return".  
Return to what?  More house flipping and internet poker?  What is happening 
now, 
says I, is the deflation of the bags of air we have all been tossing about 
to each other and pretending that it was work.  The jobs as coordinators, 
advisors, speculators, flippers, and all such are being volitilized away like 
the dross that they are and they are not coming back ... ever.

Add to that, as was pointed out, USPS jobs  and also:

- for the first time in living memory the magic spell cast on education has 
been breeched.  Municipalities are cutting back on educational funding, 
programs, personnel, and expenses.  Once the grip of the brainwashing that if 
you don't fund schools more and more, then you hate children is loosed, there 
is no end to how modest educational expenses will be in the near future.

- with Obama care on the way there will be a great reduction in the number 
of medica personnel and jobs in related fields.  This might seem 
counter-intuitive, but as we approach universal care, we will also approach 
simplified 
care.  No more treatment for Restless Hangnail Syndrome or substituting a 
twenty minute daily walk with liver killing drugs.

- with an industry like housing in the toilet for the foreseeable (if not 
imaginable) future, it will take with it real estate agents, mortgage 
brokers, inspectors, bank personnel (already happening), drywall hangers, 
granite 
counter top installers, appraisers, etc. etc.


The 'economy' of our near future is going to be very different.  To those 
who look for the economy of the past decade to return it will appear as if 
there is no economy at all.


James</HTML>