It's not enough to say we're failing less than others

The NY TIMES says today that industrial companies throughout the developing world have experienced a huge wave of growth as manufacturing left mature economies in the West. So investors focused on parts of the industrial sector that benefited from the manufacturing boom. They bet on energy companies that powered factories and on commodity producers that met the rising demand for the raw materials needed to supply those factories and construction.

Consumer-oriented companies, meanwhile, many of which are catering to the fast-growing middle class in places like China, have held up remarkably well. China is on track this year to overtake Japan in the number of vehicles it has on the road, putting it second behind the United States.

A way for investors to gain exposure to emerging-market consumers is through shares of large multinational companies that generate a sizable portion of their revenue from those regions. These stocks have performed well because of their long-term growth opportunities in emerging economies.

There's very little manufacturing in American anymore; and at the rate we're headed, with cloud computing, robotics, animation, and nanotechnology, we won't even need fast-food cooks or CEOs anymore. Or hookers too, mankind's oldest profession will be replaced with 3-D holograms. And even those jobs might be done in some obscure country like Nauru. That's human progress!

Soon we may be giving corporations the "OK" to hire un-paid workers as part of Obama's new jobs plan. Republicans can't say "no" to that, can they? After all, Eric Cantor personally pushed this plan with the president at a White House meeting in December 2009 (Just for people currently receiving unemployment benefits. The long-term unemployed and 99ers are SOL.)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are more than 2 million who've passed the 99 week milestone for UI benefits, but nothing is said about the millions of other "exhaustees"? Joe Carbone, president of The Workplace, Inc. says: "Unfortunately these folks are the sacrificial lambs of the Great Recession."

What are unemployed Americans expected to do now to survive through the Great Recession? Play the lottery? I wonder when the jobless will be the butt of jokes on late night television: "Did you hear the one about the ninety-niner that walked into the bar?"

After three years a final report to Congress estimates that the federal government (via military contractors) has lost up to $60 billion in fraud and waste since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started. We can find tons of cash to grease the hands of Taliban drug runners, but we can't find a dime to extend unemployment benefits for jobless Americans.

And why are the crooks like those at Bank of America still in business and not in jail?

But on the brighter side of unemployment, a poll says you're happy because you have more free time to clean your house. Whoopie! Somebody has a job taking silly polls! That almost makes me wish for another Great Recession!

Outsourcing American jobs, corruption in politics and defense spending, greedy CEOs, crooked bankers, and lack of empathy for the unemployed. After all these years, for the unemployed nothing has changed, it's still the same.

If our economic and political system were really working the way it's supposed to be, then why are there so many Americans out of work and suffering? Maybe "democracy" and "capitalism" have become antiquated, as they don't seem to be working for far too many people anymore. To say it's better than others isn't enough. It's not enough to say we're better, just because we're failing less than others.

(Please take my new poll at the top in the right column)