The Other Side of the News...

Can America’s leadership face up to being throttled
In what it considers to be its own domain?

Hey, we all read the Greening of America. Get rid of manufacturing.
It was dirty stuff and we were too good to get our hands dirty. It was time to move up, so sayeth the gurus of the day—gurus who probably made a big killing by giving business the excuse it needed to screw American labor and move business off-shore (one of the first uses of that euphemism…)
Excuse me for talking frank here but it’s demanded that we lay it on the line…
After all, we were the technology pro’s. We could master the information age and become its new prophets.

Only, it didn’t work out that way.

Sure, we obliged all of those business owners who couldn’t see beyond the profits that would come from cutting costs; who didn’t give a rat’s nose about all of the workers that would be displaced or the families that were dependent upon their incomes…

And we moved to corner the Information Age…
Or at least we thought we did!

In the beginning, it seemed that we could do no wrong.

Silicone Valley was where it was happening and everywhere you looked, there was a new start-up, a new vision, a new technology company that would become an overnight success predicated on the fast growth of the Internet.

And then the bubble broke!

What were we left with? Yes, we still had our information and communications business but now they were selling to brick and mortar institutions. And overnight businesses disappeared never to be seen again.

Out of this disaster, we learned a few valuable lessons:

One, that America was not alone in some technology vacuum; but that the other guys could play the game, too.

Secondly, you don’t toss out what you have without considering all the variables. One that was glossed over was education.

Not everyone, it seemed, was capable of moving up. It was the same lie bandied about by computer marketers: “No, computers were not going to replace people, they were just going to free them up to perform other, more important tasks.” We learned that in our computer marketing classes. Sure!

So, here’s the small print.

Despite what the president says tonight, this is what you need to think about:

America has lost 200,000 plus jobs since 2,000 in Silicone Alley in Information technology and communications alone. And guess what? These same jobs are being filled elsewhere!

And if you don’t think that Microsoft like all the others don’t have big staffs there, you are whistling Dixie, my friend.

Also, that we don’t hold an exclusive on this business. What the government doesn’t want you to know is that our indebtedness to China alone in the areas of information and technology jobs has grown from $14 billion in 2000 to $49 billion in 2005. Said another way, our debt in what we had thought was our exclusive area of specialization has tripled in less than five years!...

Where, ladies and gentlemen, do we go from here?

Les Aaron
The Other Side of the News…
www.lesaaron.blogspot.com

Take it seriously!