Well thought out and written post. I agree with most of it except for a couple of points:
Quote:the right hates the people that qualify for the Earned Income Dividend on their tax returns,but those people live below the poverty level.
The fact is that the Earned Income Credit was a Republican invention and every raise in the EIC since that time has been by Republican initiative.
Quote:Seems to me that a blue collar worker is entitled to that sort of life. Comfortable and secure.
I wish we were all
'entitled' to comfort, security, the 'good life', but most of us have no such entitlement and are required to work for what we want rather than have others support us.
Having said that, the blue collar class is alive and well in New Mexico, but I don't doubt that it has diminished over the last couple of decades. I do think, however, that we are in a transition between industry trends. Much of the small manufacturing work once available has been outsourced to countries where labor is so much cheaper. Every time this has happened though, a new industry has been raised up and it will be interesting to see what that will be this time.
Maybe a little off topic but still related, I do think our lawmakers are going to have to take a good hard look at the regulations they impose on American employers. Every hike in the minimum wage, every new rule requiring more benefits to be extended to workers, every union contract that limits the amount of work a worker is allowed to do increases the cost of doing business and makes foreign labor pools look all that more attractive. I do believe there needs to be laws requiring reasonably safe work practices and workplace, but if we continue to try to legislate a better deal for the domestic work force, we will see more and more jobs outsourced and more and more foreign countries benefitting from our largesse.
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