The new criteria is the corporate 'bottom line'

It’s all in your point of view. Recent reports show 13,000 manufacturing jobs eliminated at Chrysler. Factory output at a 17-month low! But in the same week, the stock market rose to a new high!

What does it mean? Is there a connection? Affluent retirees in North County with solid pensions and a large stake in the market for additional income think it’s just dandy. But what of the factory worker who has just lost his job and the important health and retirement benefits that went with it? Is he happy? Hardly!

There was a time when we judged the economy by the number of middle class workers who were gainfully employed and providing for their families. The new criteria, however, appears to be the corporate “bottom line.” If it costs more to make it here than in the Third World, transfer the manufacturing overseas. The corporation becomes more profitable and the shareholders busily clip their coupons!

Is this the promise of America? Ten percent of the population incredibly rich – almost no middle class anymore – and a large reservoir of unskilled, underpaid “peons” to fill all those minimum wage jobs? What a future!

Robert F. Green