Excuse me, let me be more sensitive, Susan.

I don't mean to make light of the fact that many textile jobs as well as lots of other product oriented employment is moving to foreign markets. I live in Dalton Georgia, where the entire economy is based on manufacturing carpet. That could dry up someday and it would totally wreck my financial life.

But, in the big picture, what about the global economy? What about all the products that we manufacture and sent to other nations? How does that all fit in to the big picture? In the end, someone (perhaps an individual or maybe a corporation with ten million stockholders) will decide to manufacture some product in Vermont, or Indonesia, or Mississippi, or Belgium, whereever, it makes no difference. They are making this decision on the business climate, and are endeavoring to make the most profit that they can for as long as they can.

If you live in Vermont, and they come there it is a good thing. If you live in Vermont and they decide to go to tupelo Mississippi because the profit margin is going to be higher, is it bad? Not if you live in Tupelo! I am only trying to think globally here. I have a brother in law who used to bitch at me for owning a Toyota (that by the way was manufactured in the US) and would only buy AMERICAN cars. I could walk through his house and point out scores of products that he owned that were foreign made, but NOT A CAR!~!! What the hell makes the difference? It is only what you are sensitive to. He was a United Steel WOrker that had been layed off due to the plant closing.

I imagine in the northesat you are more sensitive to textiles and shoes as these are the businesses that have been effected. If you live in Seattle you are more concerned about Aircraft. I do not claim to know the answers to this delemma, but it think it is pretty presumptuous of us in the USA to be isolationists. Perhaps an entire thread should be devoted to this economic delemma. Could be quite enlightening. I wonder if this economic discussion will layer out on party lines or if it will be more random as to how each individual has been effected by foreign imports