The 40 Year Slump: The Decline Of The American Job

[Blus4u]

2. Talk about living the dream...

I started working as a lifeguard my senior year of high school in '69 and was paid $0.65/hr, which I believe was minimum wage at the time. I had to take one summer class to finish my undergrad degree in '73 and spent a good portion of time on a near deserted campus watching the televised Watergate Hearings. After five years or so of knocking around in various dead end jobs, I knew I had to get serious and find a "real" job with the birth of my first child in '79 and wound up in.....you guessed it, manufacturing.

A good portion of that 35 years or so was with a fortune 500 company and in 2000 I became acutely aware of how the game was being played when the CEO was making $90 million a year on a $4.5 million salary (the other $85.5 million in stock options and bonuses). Meanwhile they're off-shoring as fast as possible, are stagnating the wages and salaries of the people that actually produce product, and are starving the remaining US operations of resources and investment along the way.

Talk about living the dream.

Peace