I will hold my yays for a minute, until I actually see a "real revivial" in the local economy. One thing that all the articles miss is that transporation is one on part of the problem, even though it is parcel of every step of the manufacturing process.

The other half of that equation is the raw materials themselves. That means the crude that isn't made into Gas, Diesel, J.P. and the like is what becomes our plastic knick-knacks in the first place. If it were only the cost of the fuel for transport, we would have absorbed it, the down turn would have come quickly because the higher it rises, the less we buy.

While that was the conservative bush platform, i.e. what they based thier stupid little chant "Its a free market", what they continously missed along with most everyone else, was that control of the raw materials is still important. Too many folks in this country thougtht they we could pay for the war with the oil in the middle east. Or that because we have nucs, we can just order other countries around. And lo and behold, if you can't the raw materials, part of which includes the shipping, then you can make anything and you don't sell anything.

I think what we will see is more and more of the old jobs that used to go to the other countries, that of sweat shop work. If nothing else with our unemployment up, the price of everything climbing and the good paying jobs going away, we are going to see another race to the bottom for wages and benefits. If you don't want the job for less than minimum wage (part time, training status, L.T.A, what ever) then someone else will, and sadly it is true, and always has been.

About the only thing that every stopped them from cutting all the supports out from under us was the U.I. and Welfare. Both were limited term, but then the Pol found out the could use the welfare roles to scare people even worse. S.S. is another one that the Bushivites hate because it does do something for folks, it keeps them out of total poverty (absolutely no income) and of course that is why they are trying to get rid of it. Once all the safety nets are gone, they you can expect to see whole corporations implode as people are told "either you take a pay cut, and benefits loss or you don't work".

I know this sounds rather negative, but over the last 20 years starting with regean admin, this is a regular and real occurence. They have always 'toughted' the jobs created or the ones come back, but the reality of it was that the average job that left paid around $40 an hour and had benefits. The majority of the new jobs, and return jobs were closer to $10 an hour with no benefits. And with the advent of the net, the corporation headquarters can be in any country that gives them the lowest tax base, while have branch offices in countries with the lowest cost of resources, while have divisions in countries with the lowest cost of shipping.

So, unless we in America are able to beat any other country by have a raw material at lower cost, and less transporation, the corporations will simply move thier main processing plant to the country with the cheapest raw materials and continue on. And since the price of gas is tied so to the price of crude, any increase in crude only double or triples thier profit, so there is no incentive to stay here if the price of crude isn't high enough for profit, and low enough for a profit margin.