So I get this magazine for free because I'm in the business. They keep on asking me to subscribe for $70 year or so but I really can't afford to spend $70 in this economy. I like the magazine and I'd send them the money but I've gotta pay the electric and the rent first and after that the bank overdraft charges.
So I get the latest copy and it's got this editorial and I thought a wider audience might like to see it.
publisher's statement
There was a country where they had so many factories and made so many things that they invited anyone in the world to come help with the work. And a whole lot of people came. And most of them stayed. Eventually there were almost 300 million of them.
Year after year they raised all their salaries and became a very happy country.
After a while, they all decided everything they made was too expensive. So they decided that it would be better to make everything in some other country where the workers were paid much less and the price of everything would be much less. They called this Free Trade. Every year the Happy Country would send over more jobs and more factories to all the other countries and they would send back things that were so cheap they were almost free.
Meanwhile, the age of everyone in the Happy Country went up and up and up. They jogged and went to the gym a lot, but eventually a lot of them got old and so sick they became a burden on the others. The King and his counselors liked it that all the expensive little stores in the country closed down and a couple of very big stores began opening up that sold everything cheaper than ever. This was good timing because the young and healthy people in the Happy Country had problems of their own. Their burden was getting heavier and heavier.
There just weren't that many jobs left. They didn't make steel or cars or phones or almost anything solid any more.. They were good at computers, but they didn't make them anymore, or even the software to run them.
The Happy Country began to call itself a "service economy" but it turned out that when you called up for customer service, the person who answered the phone was in Ireland, and if you went for an X-ray the doctor who looked at it was in India.
The Happy Country still needed people to clean the parks and go to war and work in the big cheap stores. But those jobs didn't pay that much. So it was especially good that there were those cheap stores. But, even so, it's hard to go shopping if there is no money at all.
Eventually there were so many old people and so many sick people and so few people with good jobs that crowds of angry people began to form.
The people carried signs that said "We Want Jobs In THIS Country" and We Don't Need The Lowest Prices Always: and "Free Trade Isn't Free."
The King and his Counselors were shocked.
We thought you wanted the "Lowest Prices Always?!" the King said. And the people in the crowds were sort of embarrassed. But they shrugged and said, "Well, we might have been wrong."
Nick Monjo - Body Magazine
OK, I typed this in, no cut and paste, mistakes are most likely mine.
Nick might appeciate some feedback and he'll be surprised as hell if he's swamped.
fashionmmg@aol.com
just tell him that girlies sent you.