Nobody learns a damn thing from history. At the turn of the twentieth century Great Britain was top country in the world and first up on the free market tracks In time they found out the bridge was out and those free market tracks led into the river. Britain’s trade policy was to open her markets to all, free of tariffs, believing that in that way the rest of the world would earn enough selling their goods to Britain to be able to buy British made goods in return. An everybody wins policy. Like NAFTA. We climbed up on those same tracks and we too have plunged into the river. Why is there continuing unemployment in the United States? Cold weather? Wall Street villains? How about because there are no more jobs for them. In 1950 Philadelphia was the #1 manufacturing city in the US, making everything from Stetson hats to locomotives, with good paying jobs in chemical plants and oil refineries, publishing plants and shipyards. There were thousands of small manufacturing businesses scattered throughout the city where the working poor could find work at a decent wage. No longer. It’s all gone, gone to China and Viet Nam and South Korea and Mexico and every other low wage country in the world. And those good paying jobs are never coming back.

We thought that it would never end
That we could simply tax and spend
Our way to riches and to greater wealth
Than ever seen on this fair Earth
Or from the country’s founding birth
For all was rosy, all was blooming health
Then laws were passed that meant the jobs
Would lead to many heartfelt sobs
As husbands told their wives there was no chance
For work because the lefty claque
Had gotten us up on that track
Where corporations found they could enhance
Their profits if they’d simply move
To low wage countries sure to prove
That profits could be make hand over fist
And so the jobs left one by one
In few short years the job was done
Despite sworn statements jobs would not be missed
So here we are as Britain went
Into the river plain hell bent
And now the plants and jobs are nowhere found
They’re overseas where pay is low
Don’t blame the ones who chose to go
‘Twas politicians drove us in the ground