Originally Posted by NousDefionsDoc

Ok, first of all everybody quit saying "fair" - there is no fair in business. Anymore than there is in combat.


This I can agree with. We have to quit bitching about the Chinese and the EU and do what we can do here at home. US workers are simply not competitive on anything but quality. Look at California and all the problems they have with workman's comp etc. You've got the UAW kicking the Marines out of their parking lots and ruining the car industry. When I was roughnecking as a kid, the steel workers unionized themselves out of business, then came to Texas to work in the oilfield and tried to do the same thing (should have heard the toolpusher's answers to that one).

The old rules don't apply anymore and we've got to change them. When I was a kid, everybody's goal was to get on with a Exxon or Texaco, work until 65 and then enjoy retirement. Now you're lucky if you stay with the same company for 3 years. It has changed.

Are we still the world's inventers? I don't know anymore. Look at our school system. Instead of teaching the 3 Rs, we have teachers telling kids to protest and write hate letters to soldiers. And that's where it all starts. Go to anyone of these growing countries and you see their kids sitting at their desks like little soldiers - learning, competing. The Kid is in the 4th grade and is already into Algebra and Calculas, computers, etc. He has already passed my ability to help him in two or three subjects. Are US kids in public schools the same way? I don't see the results of that in the teens when I go up there.

In Texas, I see a lot of people drawing unemployment, bitching about SS and complaining the Mexicans are taking their jobs. I don't see a lot of people working and going to school at night. Just my impression.

Our jobs aren't running to China or India, we're air mailing them on a silver platter.

As far as the globalization goes, the last time globalization was stopped was in the 1930s. Our isolationism contributed greatly to it IMO - and we got the great depression out of it. When we make the rules - everybody seems to do ok. we made the rules after WWII - and we got a Cold War instead of a hot one for it. When we don't make the rules, when we don't step up to the plate - like after the USSR fell and Clinton let us flounder around with chaos theory - things go to shit.

We are the only superpower in the world right now. We have the only Navy capable of prohjecting any real power, our military is incredibly efficient, our economy has bounced back failry well from the busted tech bubble and 9-11. We need to step up, decide what the new rules are going to be, and sell it to the rest of the world - or at least those parts of it that we can. It matters little if we play "fair" and everybody else doesn't. We are the ones that suffer, so we are the ones that have to fix it. When the US doesn't take the lead, the world gets in trouble - whether they admit it or not.