The United States has become the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost.  The US has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little. The biggest export by the USA is waste paper.  Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world.

The same thing that happened to Detroit is now happening to dozens of other communities across the US. In many cities, the "real" rate of unemployment is over 30%. The US has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2000 and 15.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000. In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned houses, 44 schools have been permanently closed and you can literally buy a house for one dollar in the worst areas. 

Dell Inc., one of Amarica’s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade. Manufacturing employment in the US computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975. Now, 84% of printed circuit boards, used in tens of thousands of products, are produced in Asia.

In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide; none were produced in the US.  Between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of US parent companies increased an astounding 30% to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, US employment at Amarican multinational corporations declined 8% to 21.1 million.

There are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs operating inside the USA. Oakland, CA. police have announced that due to budget cuts there are a number of crimes (grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism) that the department will not respond to any longer. 

Ford Motor Company closed the Ford Ranger plant in St. Paul, Minnesota. Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are now lost because making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford's new "global" manufacturing strategy.

The state of Illinois is so far behind on its bills that not even schools and essential social services are getting their money on time. And in a desperate attempt to save money, the city of Colorado Springs turned off a third of its streetlights and put its police helicopters up for auction.

More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc. hired in 2010 were outside the US. UPS is also hiring at a faster clip overseas. For both companies, sales in international markets are growing twice as fast as domestically. This explains why unemployment remains high in the US, edging up to 9.8% (officially), even though companies are doing well: Only 4% of the top 500 US corporations did not report profits in 2010. The US government is giving tax breaks for the scum-sucking wealthy and crooked corporations to pursue a hiring spree abroad. That's a dose of reality you won't hear on Faux news. And as the Great Recession has sown unemployment and downgraded work even for those people who have held on to their jobs, the number of Amaricans lacking healthcare has swelled beyond 50 million.