It's been said a Republican is a Democrat who got mugged last night. It could probably also be said a Democrat is a Republican who's job just got exported overseas. Color me glad I work IT in a company too small to make outsourcing practical.

I'm sure there are many steel, automotive, textile, and other heavy industry workers who have very, very little sympathy for folks in the hi-tech field getting tossed out on their cans because of low-price foreign competition. However, I'm old enough to remember the beginning of the computer revolution, when (as noted in the article) there were regular news stories on how the sky was falling because thousands of bank tellers, stenographers, switchboard operators, and other such jobs were being eliminated by computers. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on the relation of the women's movement to the elimination of big chunks of what were traditionally considered "women's" jobs in the 1970s?

The world didn't end then, and it won't end now. Thirty years later, I often wonder what's become of all those people dislocated by the various factory closings of the 1970s. Certainly they didn't stay in breadlines all those years. Since I have a feeling the answer is "most worked their ass off and eventually got back on their feet again", I don't expect professional victim-exploiter Michael Moore to be doing a documentary on them any time soon.