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DeaconBlues (imported) wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2009 11:28 pm
Truly, I think the world has changed for the worse in many ways, especially since the early 90's, but I could see the downward spiral beginning as far back as 1980....
...Truly, everything about our lives today has actually become more difficult, our quality of life is getting WORSE not better.
I was forced to see it coming a lot farther back than that. In 1966 I was working in a manufacturing job, In December I was laid off at the company I was working for along with everyone but the office staff. The entire factory was packed up and shipped to Singapore where it was reassembled and staffed with locals. The office staff moved to an office in Century City where it remained, officially, an "American" company. Even 40 years ago American companies, looking to their bottom lines without a thought for long term consequences, were moving their manufacturing off shore to gain lower labor costs and to avoid having to comply with labor relations, health and safety, and anti-pollution laws. I became aware of job leakage from this country have, in my own small way tried to oppose it.
By 1980, when job leakage was already a torrent, I was sought out by a corporate head hunter for a job selling programming and engineering time overseas, in India, Ireland, and Eastern Europe, to corporations in this country. I refused on the grounds that every programming or engineering job going off shore meant that the knowledge gained in doing it was forever lost to our own pool of programmers and engineers. As an American, I do not regret having made that decision, although, had I taken that job I would probably be in a much better financial position today. In hindsight, resistance to the brain drain of technical jobs leaving the country was, by that time, probably already too late.
At the time that the tax deduction for interest payments other than mortgages was repealed, and the "home equity loan" came into being I was taking an accounting class. The day the bill was signed, the instructor came into class and announced, "I want you all to know that you have witnessed the beginning of the end of the American Middle Class!" As it turned out, he was right.
In the 1990's when regulations on banks, investment houses and insurance companies were being systematically removed to "get the government off the back of business" there were accountants, business analysts, and Yes, even legislators, who said that this de-regulation would lead to another Great Depression maybe as soon as the end of the first decade of the new century. They saw it coming! It's not that their voices were not loud enough, few people were willing to listen. The same voices were raised when the standards to qualify for a home loan were lowered in pursuit of a steady upward rise in property values. Again, few were willing to listen.
Meanwhile, our industrial base had become hollow. A great many respected "American" companies had become administrative shells with head offices in the United States, but with manufacturing all done in other countries. A large number of those that were still doing work here were snapped up by foreign investors, still mostly from England, Germany and France, but with a rapidly growing number from the Middle East and Asia. I saw this personally when I lost many customers because they were sold to foreign companies who immediately brought in their own IT staff to implement their preferred software suite.
To top it off, to add insult to injury, along came "Reality Television". Lest you think that I am simply being facetious, consider what this trend has done to the jobs of actors, writers and production technicians who used to work on the dramatic shows that have been displaced by all the cheaper "reality" shows, and this coming fall, by Jay Leno. It's that same effect as off shoring has on other industries. (Not to mention that amount of movie and TV production that actually HAS been off shored.)
Are we better off? Hell No! Did we do it to ourselves? Yes, we did. Can we do something about it? I think so. I believe that the current administration, from whatever side of the political spectrum you view it, is trying to dig us out of this hole. I will certainly do my part, freely giving my opinions to our elected officials, Federal, State and local,:D and trying to achieve business goals, even at this late stage in my life, that will contribute to the aggregate total of improvement in our national well being. We may have to rise to a level of national commitment commensurate with the Second World War to do it, but I hope to see this country back to the situation of having each generation better off than the last during my lifetime.
