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• Thursday, April 17, 2008 03:10 AM

  @Barrister

  Definitely agree that there used to be a sense of ethics among employers in this country that is (for the most part) gone.

  NAFTA didn't help the American worker. The Bush policy of increasing the number of H1-B visas and extending them even as Americans were being laid off didn't help, and although that didn't affect blue collar workers it has hurt the middle class.

  But you are right, you can't point the finger at a single person or administration. Every administration in the last 30 years has become increasingly beholden to corporate interests, and corporations are the only ones who have benefited from any of this. Government stopped doing its job.

  You tax what you want to discourage, and subsidize what you want to encourage. Why don't we have taxes on offshoring labor and manufacturing? I understand the free market arguments against such taxes. And I'd be all for them if we lived in a perfect world with perfect markets, but we don't. Our policies have been incredibly destructive to our middle class and, frankly, suicidal in the long term.

  I'd be completely amazed if the people of Pennsylvania weren't bitter. I'm bitter, and I've actually done pretty well through all of this. Watching my country get dismantled and sold to the highest campaign contributor while Americans suffer pisses me off.

  —mattwa33186 Read mattwa33186's other letters
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