Good morning, Netizens...

David Horsey's cartoon this morning is very painfully truthful, especially considering how many people have been laid off/downsized in the recent economy. Nowhere is this more-deeply felt than in the newspaper industry, as well David Horsey should know. Journalists are an endangered species these days.

What really embitters me, however, are the number of American jobs we have exported to foreign countries. It used to be that if you called a product support line of any computer hardware firm, you generally could talk with someone who both knew the product(s) and spoke English as their primary language, but no more. Where support phone lines once were meaningful, in today's world you now participate in an international crap shoot, and you may end up speaking to someone in Korea, China, India, Pakistan or some other country whose English language skills are marginal to non-existent. If you are fortunate, they may even know the product line and be able to assist you with your problem.

This situation extends to most corporate companies we once took for granted.

Those few Americans who still hold down jobs live beneath an employment scimitar, their heads on the chopping block every day, and if their bosses could figure out a way to cost-effectively ship their jobs overseas too, they, too, would join the rosters of the unemployed, all as a cost-savings maneuver that is killing this country.

So if you truly want to know where the lost jobs have gone, look overseas. Although statistically we do not feel the pain quite so much here in Washington State, the jobs that were lost are an awful plague in other areas of the country.

Of course, your results may differ.

Dave

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