Everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else: Where did our jobs go?

Hey people, you know perfectly well where our jobs went. They went to the far east, to China, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Burma, Malaysia … wherever child labor laws are loose or non-existent and people work cheap. The exodus of American jobs began long ago, but became a mighty river under Bush senior, went into higher gear under Clinton (who I loved but IS responsible). Bush II pushed the throttle higher, and although Obama hasn’t made it worse, he also hasn’t stopped it. I’m not sure he could if he wanted to. These are largely corporate decisions, not governmental.

There’s plenty of blame to go around if you’re big on pointing fingers. Rewarding companies for shipping jobs overseas was an idea so awful that most normal people could see the looming disaster without any special economic education, but we had nothing to say about. No one asked US.

This is a “bottom line” driven society. Until and unless something becomes more important to our nation than maximizing profits, if and when such a miracle should occur, then there is some a very small chance we’ll start to re-employ Americans, maybe even rebuild a few of the dusty, closed factories where we used to work.

Until then … IF then ever arrives … jobs will remain scarce no matter who is in the White House. You can’t fix the economy without places to employ people. We’ve sent our manufacturing base overseas where labor is cheap. You can and should blame the entire government for this one, Democrats and Republicans share in the blame … but mostly, the blame fall solidly on Capitalism implemented without the human cost being calculated as part of the equation.

As long as the goal of business isn’t merely making a profit, but making the biggest possible profits, as long as employers feel no responsibility to their workers and do not care whether they live or die, we will continue to have massive unemployment.

It’s not Obama. And sadly, if elected, it wouldn’t be Romney’s fault either. It’s the system itself that’s broken.

It does not have to be this way. Capitalism does not require utter ruthlessness. Profits can be made without completely ignoring any semblance of morality or conscience. But that is the way we do it here … and it no longer works for any but those who own the companies making the big profits.

It sort of worked to some degree as long as we only exploited Americans who at least got jobs as part of the deal, but now that we can exploit anyone anywhere, U.S. workers don’t reap any benefit at all.

You can say whatever you like about our socialist European friends: their systems do calculate the human cost of doing business. We don’t. If you like what you have, keep mouthing the same stupid platitudes and you will get the same, stupid poverty, unemployment, and loss of American prestige on the world stage.

It’s payback time, except guess what? YOU are the one paying the bill, not the guys who ran up the tab. Funny how that’s the way it always seems to work out.