I really get sick of
hearing about the preposterous anti-NAFTA debates and the proposals to
bring jobs to the countless cities and towns where jobs have
disappeared. I don't want to call anyone stupid, but you have to be
stupid to think the coal industry is coming back, that more people are
going back into farming, that steel will be produced in areas with
outmoded transport systems, backward looking unions and 19th Century steel mills, or that American auto companies are going to expand rapidly in the near future.
All these people who are out of work and listening to the demagogues, are in cities and towns that will NEVER recover. Never.
Hey political liars and scam artists, listen-up. In 1942 when the American war machine was gearing up and the labor market was being drafted America faced a drastic shortage of workers in the right industrial places.
Solution: Federal employees traveled all through Appalachia buying the houses of people who wouldn't migrate to Detroit and Chicago because their life savings were tied up in their houses. With their house sold, they readily up and moved.
Nothing has changed. If people need to leave small towns for jobs in other areas, the government has to buy their houses, their only form of savings. Then they will move...then they will find jobs.