It's raining here and there is time after the football game to reply to this essay with the attention it desrves. Yes the fifties were great times for manufacturing, the result of the baby boomers having the advantages of the G.I. bill allowing them to buy houses and go to school to upgrade their standard of living. The war created research faciclities government funded that shared data with the universities. Transportation and electronics drove the engine of production and as a result, millions of people in this country upgraded their standard of living to an unprecedented level. These were men who had fought in the war and had pride in their work and a sense of humble authority. Labor unions eneabled millions to work safely and securely knowing they would have steady work and a comfortable retirement. Wall Street hated this situation. They called it the Union Tax and created think tanks designed to train managers in divisive tactics designed to eliminate organised labor. The white collar middle-management refused to accept the Plumbers and Engineers living as well as they were. Then the work force changed. Females entered in huge numbers weakening the power of unions, after all, whats at stake if your hubby is already doing well. And management delighted in these changes knowing the workforce of the future would be easily manipulated and cowed by aggressive tactics. The manufacturing organisations needed to provide the street with bottom line figures designed to impress short term investors after the de-regulation of the banking and investment industries under Reagan. Short sighted Managers immune from responsibility made stupid descisions concerning updating manufacturing methods due to the tax structure that favored the immediate gain over long term. There was no money for R&D; too long term and expensive, outsource it. Except now they have the patents and methodology. Eliminate the workers organisations so that there was no power base to threaten the status quo. Allow large amounts of politically motivated groups to invade the education system; dumbing it down so the emerging graduates are more easily lead. Cut funding and strike fear into the universities forcing them to toe the line. If the will of the people orders clean air and safe water for their children; move the factories somewhere where they care less about the health and safety of the workers and pay them squat. Before you leave, pretend you can offer a chance to continue to produce jobs if veryone agrees to cut pay and work harder with less safe envirenment. Then if those who suffer egregrious harm try to use the courts for redress; force tort reform through the Legislature under false pretense of abuse. Let the richest 1% make and keep 30% of all the money and threaten to eliminate jobs if you complain. So; who can blame the companies like Eminence who just want to toddle along making their most cost effective products and carrying the bottom line so they can keep showing good on the ticker and fill those 401K's(Which is the biggest scam and pyramid scheme in history) after all; they too will soon need to go somewhere where they can destroy the envirenment with impunity and not pay taxes's. And yes it is a big deal. When they take a poll on CNN and 70% of the people polled(Over 100) do not even know there was a prescription drug bill passed that will affect everone, why should we expect any different. The voters could care less about issues, so we are stuck with hacks and shills as representation and a media that writes scripts instead of reporting; and they are all in bed and the voters excersize the most precious right in history as a frivolous mockery of deluded nonsense. Thank You and good night. Do one thing; Replay any old speech from JFK then fade into our current spin jockey and weep. J.R.
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