In Any town USA, the signs are pretty clear these days; a shop that opens for a few months then closes down, Pay Day Loan operations that spring up and multiply, while the once busy streets that run through those towns begin to look more and more deserted.
Old Ross Perot would be saying that those ‘sucking sounds’ we are hearing of good paying jobs going somewhere else, aught to be haunting us right about now! More and more of our technical people are now heading or have headed overseas. Those who are left behind face a future of low paying, menial and mind numbing work. BA’s fresh out of college can be heard asking ‘will that be for here or to go?’ High School kids working at the end of a grocery checkout counter stuffing bags, not realizing that the job they thought of as transitory is really permanent. “Paper or, plastic… and can I help you to your car, Miss?”
What doesn’t show as easily to the casual observer, are those of us who have given up and just don’t care anymore. Middle aged, proud Americans who have recently lost a job they held for decades and who now face a much younger workforce who are competing for low paying jobs. A growing throng of disenfranchised, disillusioned workers that grow more desperate each day. The lucky ones, those who are close enough to social security benefits, limp towards their sixty-second year the way a man dying of thirst might crawl to an oasis. Other, less fortunate forty and fifty year old wage earners, become a study in desperation as they contemplate major lifestyle changes in order to make ends meet. Welcome, my friends to the new and not so improved, twisted version of the American Dream!
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