I sure hope the economic stimulus plan, recently passed by Congress and signed by the President, does miracles. Miracles are going to be needed. The ink is not even dry and the auto industry is back asking for billions. The American automakers may be beyond hope and the Japanese don’t seem to be in any better shape. We are taking everyone down with us. I don’t guess anyone is going to buy a car again. Maybe we are going back to the horse and buggy.

My spouse and I visited a couple of furniture stores this week in search of a small bookcase. We had a long chat with one of the owners who has been in business all of his life. He said that none of the furniture is made in the US anymore. North Carolina was once the hub of manufacturing for furniture. He said nothing is made there anymore. It’s all made in the Orient. Pieces may be shipped to North Carolina and assembled but we are out of the manufacturing business in the US. We don’t seem to be making anything in this country anymore. The auto industry and electronic manufacturing have moved to Japan. Textiles are all from the orient as well as most everything else. Even much of our food is coming from other places like Mexico.

We have a GE washing machine that is a year old and has been broken three times, requiring four service calls. Fortunately, the washer has been under warranty, but the service has cost GE over $400 and is now greater that the original cost of the machine. The service man tells us the unit was made in Mexico. Nothing is made in this country anymore and what we get from elsewhere is junk or contains poison.

The only business to be in is plumbing and heating and air conditioning. Our most successful businesses are now service related. We have become a nation of consumers and all the stuff we buy has to be serviced. Even the service, such as electronics, goes overseas. Maybe the stimulus plan will create some jobs for the rebuilding of our infrastructures such as roads. The problem is that Americans don’t seem to want these jobs and we will have more illegal aliens pouring across the border to do the work.

During severe economics times, in the past, we have always had a war to solve the problem. The war created manufacturing jobs for the production of weapons and the unemployed were given jobs in the military getting killed. We are already in a war but it is one of limited scale compared to those of the past. It’s just not enough to do the job. We need to declare war on Russia and China to solve our current problem.

We like to think that we should leave the world a better place for our children. The baby boomers and their kids have been a generation of lazy gluttons who have placed self-interest and greed above everything else. I was hoping to, at least, pass on my precious porch and its contents to my grandkids but the way things are going I may have to start dismantling the place for firewood and move out with the deer I despise so much.