"ls" wrote in message
...
George Patterson wrote:
Jay Honeck wrote:


Both, of course. Our economy has grown strongly and well --


Not in the NY-NJ area it hasn't.

I must have missed it here in our area too (central TX) because, last I
checked, the local economy was anything but red hot. For example, a
little over a year ago I applied for a job answering phones for Sears -
they had had _1700_ applicants for that one job at that time. That was
basically the story for every job I applied for.

Regarding the cost of our infrastructure, it's not a simple equation.
One of the reasons labor is so expensive in the US is because it's so
well protected. You have to pay a minimum wage, you have to provide a
minimal level of safety in your work environment, you can't hire 15 year
old children, nor make them work 14 hour days for 5 dollars, you have to
follow various rules as far as time off and benifits and so on.

In fact, the history of labor in the US is long and bloody - those
protections aren't just onerous inconveniences for the rich, but
hard-won protections for the people and their families.

Now it should be clear why "globalization" is so seductive for US
businesses - other economies such as China and India don't have the same
protections in place for their labor pools. In fact, they're just ripe
for the picking as well as cheap, cheap, cheap.

When you can hire and use a foreign laborer for 1/10 of the cost of an
American equivalent to do the same job, well, there goes your
high-fallootin' principles against exploitation of cheap labor.

Don't ask me why I know all this.....

In sum, there's a LOT wrong with our current situation - it's
complicated and will be very difficult and painful to fix...

It will never get fixed due to the fact the government is in charge of the
fixing. Only thing that is for sure is that it will get much worse.