If ‘Blue-collar’ doesn’t work for you, change it to white!

The 19th century idea of a blue-collar worker is being used as a 21st century vote bank. America and the Western Europe milked the world for 150 years when they moved their surplus agrarian workforce to the then emerging industrial sector. The mechanization of the production might have started in the 18th century in Europe but the organized industrialization of labor began in the United States of America in the middle of 19th century. The term blue-collar was coined in the 19th century uniform dress code of industrial workplaces. The blue-collar worker was a member of the working class who typically performed manual labor like mining and manufacturing and earned an hourly wage. These were skilled or unskilled workers who needed lesser formal academic education to succeed in their respective professions. Many blue collar workers are either members of a labor union or strongly support worker’s rights in non-union labor situations. These color-coded identities resulted into a certain socio-economic class having traditional religious values and a strong sense of patriotism. Even when they moved to the emerging service sector, they were confined to the manual labor. Therefore, the blue-collar working class is reluctant to move-up to the now obvious information age. Subsidies and protectionism is not the solution!

Life beyond a house and a car…

Americans have been fed with a 20th century view of prosperity and quality of life that is long outdated. The so called “American Dream” of owning a house in the suburbia, driving an American made car, having a wife, two kids, a dog and a grill in your backyard is long over. It has been 30 years since the United States was forced to share that dream with Europe and Japan and 20 years since Asia and South America invited themselves to that all American Bar-B-Que! It was way back in 1960s that President John F Kennedy realized that American leadership was slipping in science and technology and the erstwhile Soviet Union was pulling ahead in space technology. He understood the limitations of American brainpower and decided to open up the immigration to all countries. The bold and the brightest responded and the American Universities were flooded with students from around the world. Research labs received the fresh blood of creativity and American innovations overwhelmed the world! America during 1960s was at the zenith of its power!

President Kennedy was followed in office by four dim-witted and self-absorbed presidents who had little understanding of the world. Having said that, it was President Richard Nixon who opened the door to China. More than Nixon it was his National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who had the world-view and could make some intelligent assumptions. Kissinger to this day remains America’s most well-informed diplomat. By the time Lyndon B Johnson, Richard M Nixon, Gerald R Ford and finally Jimmy Carter left the scene, America and the world was a different place. Europe was asserting itself and Japan was breathing down America’s neck! Then there were these emerging  ‘Asian Tigers’ (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) that were groping their way around. The United States decided to elect the oldest President of all times in 1980. Ronald Reagan came to the office with God, Guns and the Goondas and transformed this country forever. He demolished the middle class, concentrated the nation’s wealth in fewer hands, opened and expanded the global trade, built-up the defense forces and spent the US and the Soviet Union to bankruptcy. Reagan’s transformative presidency is finally being demolished by a young President, Barack Obama.

It is the hang-over of the ‘Reagan Revolution’ that is making Americans so bitchy. He destroyed manufacturing and therefore the industrial base of this country. Reagan failed to replace manufacturing with anything else but left America in huge debt because of massive defense spending. President George H W Bush was too cautious a president to take any bold initiatives. It was all left to the set of first baby boomers to introduce America to the new ‘Information Age’. President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore brought some fresh air to the ‘White House’ but without any understanding of the old world. Economy boomed with Clinton/Gore arrival in Washington DC and the deficits were replaced with huge projected surpluses. The world watched the ‘Clinton Charisma’ with wide-eyed wonder but the Muslims of the world felt neglected and left-out in the cold. They planned and retaliated with attacks on American interests; Clinton was busy with himself and ignored the signs.

President George W Bush came to the scene with dubious legitimacy to his presidency and within months faced one of the most traumatic times in American history. The 9/11 changed America and the ‘American Presidency’ forever. This replaced the ‘Cold War’ but in a very different way. America was hit once again on its own soil by an outside force after a log gap since ‘Pearl Harbor’ in 1941. First it was a natural reaction for US to retaliate with all its might but soon it became a political opportunity to scare the nation and siphon-off huge amounts of taxpayer’s money in the name of ‘War Against Terror’. President Bush departed the stage in disgrace with a bitter and bankrupt country holding the bag. The new guy walks in, unwilling to tell the truth to the American people. The days of owning a home are over. The days of driving an American Made Car are over. The days of just being white and finding a job are over. The days of affording a dog are over. The Bar-B-Que is over!