ù Quoting Don Box from a message to Ryan Bagueros  ù 
DB> I could go on all day but the point I'm trying to make is: there's no 
DB>  bad guy in this. If there's a need, people will fill it... no need 
DB> and  they'd better retrain. If you had a tile roof on your house 
DB> w/plastic  siding... and plastic trim... you wouldn't need to hire a 
Ah, I see, just some nameless, faceless act of God that supply & demand is 
the 
method for our economy? Please. The fact is that we don't need any less 
steel, 
or automobiles. Indeed, the market is growing for each of these. The 
difference
is that companies have found it cheaper to exploit Third World workers who 
are 
*truly* desperate for food and shelter, who will work in any conditions to 
put 
food on the table. These are the kinds of decisions made *only* in a 
profit-only system.
There *is* a bad guy here: call it the Invisible Hand (as in Adam Smith), 
capitalism, the system, the Man, whatever. 
The more we go on, the more 'exceptions' we find to this great american 
dream. 
We started out with everyone except me on this echo claiming that *anyone* 
can 
make it, they just have to work hard. But now we've figured out that there 
are 
(as you stated) three significant groups of workers who have fulfilled their 
end of the bargain, and yet in the end are getting shafted: automobile 
workers,
steelworkers and miners. Of course, we all know in our heads that these three 
occupations are not the only ones where people don't get what they were 
promised. 
Still in contention (in this echo at least) are the fate of blacks and other 
minorities, people who grow up in a culture of poverty, anyone who happens to 
get caught into the criminal justice system (and with the highest 
incarceration rate of any industrialized country, that's a lot of people), 
etc 
etc. 
So, now, we're left with the american dream works for: anyone who is lucky 
enough to pick a profession that will not someday be destroyed in the 
interest 
of profit, anyone who is white, anyone who is born into a middle- or upper- 
class family. 
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