Wake up!

The President, in his State of the Union address sympathized with the country by bemoaning the “longer hours for less pay” that Americans are working.

We have been spoiled.

Most of the rest of the world has been laboring under depressed wages that barely sustain and in some cases are not enough to do even that. We should not be surprised that a just leveling factor has started to impose itself. We had been immune for so long because we had the luxury of not living in a global economy. We could suck in imports at reduced prices and export goods made at our wage levels.

Now the world is not only our market but also our competitor in wages. We started to see the impact a several decades ago when it was noted how many many more hours per day and days per year Americans worked than other developed countries. Those additional hours were the trade off to enable our goods to be sold overseas at competitive prices while we enjoyed higher wages. Then we started to see a slowdown in wage increases. Then, when the current repression hit, companies took the opportunity to adjust.

In my own company, I first saw pension cut-backs, then cuts on vacations, then withheld bonuses, then lay-offs, then transfers of jobs to overseas divisions where wages were lower and most recently, wage cuts -- all within a year and a half. In addition, more and more expenses are being pushed out to the employees. The very prevalence of telecommuting is turning each employee in my company into a quasi-independent contractor bearing his or her own costs and bargaining for their jobs.

Who do we think we are bargaining against except the world? We are not quite yet waking up. The world is willing to work at much cheaper wages because they live at much lower standards than we Americans. I get tired of hearing the public and our politicians (Republican and Democrat alike) rail against the sending of jobs overseas and against the lowering of wages and the standard of living.

Until we are willing to pay for what we consume our standard of living SHOULD decrease. We have been living at the expense of the rest of the world and cry at our misfortune of seeing our standard of living now decrease. We have decried the sweat shops and child labor and deforestation of tropical rainforests but we don’t want those areas to compete on a level playing field for our jobs.

It’s time to wake up! Our standard of living is neither a right nor necessary. It is certainly not moral to defend. Our country is great because of our hard work, willingness to compete and generosity. We need to start buckling down and, if necessary, throw out the luxuries until the rest of the world can catch up. Are we afraid to compete for a fair wage?