Well, danged! I know I'm gettin' into this thread a little late but I'd just like to throw a few other thoughts into the soup:

Not to be playing the *blame game* but these are a few of the folks/institutions that I blame.

1.The Japanese? (Why the Japanese, Bobert?) Well, they kicked but in the 80's with their better products and got the westerners all razed up to *compete* and so compete they did.

2.The *Western Corporations*. In competing with the Japanese, they took it to economic war levels as they pushed their labor force to new highs in production.

3.The Ad-men who sold the *western* society laborer ( more the US worker) a bunch of junk that he doesn't need but will spend a life time paying for because he thinks he needs it. Like how many $25,000 cars can a man own before he figures out that he doesn't own anything?

4.The government which makes decisions about spending like they own the presses that print the money. (Hey, wait, they do own those presses?) and then spend it with little or no regard for the tax payers who are out there working their brains out on Boss Hog's widget assembly lines.

5.Sports which they certainly aren't. Everything is about winning.

So here we have a bunch of over-worked crazed folks riding from job to job in their Lexus's witha cell phone in one hand and a hand gun in the other, on their way to their kids soccer game, where their team had better win, then get back into the Lexus, get home after dark, crash after a few drinks and go at it agian the following day.

Yeah, these aren't win-win times. These are not times when labor is appreciated. Or loyality. We got overworked, underpaid, underappreciated laborers, working their brains out to keep Boss Hog in hihg cotton anf they're collectively pissed off.

And to make matters worse, we stick everyone in one big Skinner's box of metropolitan areas that desensitize people into specks of insignificance.

That's my read on it...

Bobert