Reply #131: Look...

[datavg]

...I hear ya, but it's always been this way.

This was a corporation before it was a country. That's a historical fact.

The idea is to get us back where we were in the 1950s and 1960s, when the corporate types owned the companies and the people owned their jobs. We had it and it worked. We can have it again.

Part of this lies in having a solid manufacturing base again. We need to be actually making things people want to buy, instead of trying to support ourselves with services and engaging in financial engineering. There is absolutely no reason why we should have to engage in mass importation of automobiles in the United States of America. No reason. Look at some old movies or even old television shows dating as recently as the late Seventies. EVERYONE drove American! We bought them, drove them and we were happy. My grandfather had a 1963 Chevy Impala that I would give anything to have today. My other grandfather had a 1975 Pontiac Bonneville that was so solid you could have used it as a tank. The oil shock of the 1970s had something to do with our change in tastes and there was the whole Ralph Nader safety thing of the mid 1960s but the big issue was the Detroit auto companies suddenly being run by accountants instead of engineers. That's changing for the better and even Daniel Howes of The Detroit News says 80 percent of the per car cost gap between General Motors and their Asian competitors is gone in the new contract. SO...ok, General Motors got what it wanted and a lot of people aren't happy about that...but it also means there's now NO EXCUSE for our stuff not being as good or better than their stuff PLUS we have the upper hand in terms of currency valuation.

The best social program in the world is a good job in a value added economy where government doesn't spend more than it takes in. Bill Clinton knew it. Lyndon Johnson knew it but we had other problems at the time. Jack Kennedy knew it better than anyone.

We just have to get back to it. We know what we have to do. So, let's do it!

I'm 42 years old. My wife and I are IT professionals in Southern California but we remember what America was like 25-30 years ago in the midwest and we want it back. A lot of people do, and the first candidate who finally figures this out isn't gonna be President. He's gonna be King.