You're right. It's pretty well agreed that the American economy, and American prosperity, began its decline in the 70s. We emerged as top dog after WWII. but we got lazy--and greedy. No, it wasn't anybody's fault, or maybe it was everyone's fault. But we coasted on our post-war prosperity and failed to invest, and lived too high off the hog for too long. We also got rich selling Europe and Japan state of the art industry and technology while we let our mills and factories starve for investment.

We got fat on big salaries and middle class welfare and cheap housing, cars, energy and college degrees and super-low taxes while we crammed our products down the throat of the rest of the world. And we consumed our natural resources and our wealth doing it. Eventually, we couldn't afford it, so we sent our wives to work and we developed cheap credit for the masses (hey! that was more profitable than actually making stuff), and we never noticed that, after correcting for inflation, we were still poorer every year. With the wife working and credit cards, we actually thought we were better off. Then one day we woke up in debt.

The jobs are never coming back. Obama can't create them by stimulus spending, and business is not going to invest their tax cuts in creating them either. In fact, Our problem now is too many people. We just need Mexicans to do the dirty work, and Asians to do the science and engineering, while the rest of us scramble and cut each other's throats for all those office jobs we thought we were going to get but that we now know were just masturbation.

The Republicans think if unions, regulation and taxes were to disappear, it would be 1955 all over again. The Democrats still think we can borrow our way into the Jetsons' plastic paradise.

I've seen the future, and it does not work.