I saw an old friend working at his current job yesterday. He used to work for my company and was as good as it gets, as an employee. He was the go-to guy when I needed some manufacturing problem ironed out on the production floor. He could think about what I was describing and help solve problems.

Often I would describe something and give him a rough sketch and he would come back in a few hours with a rough prototype. Then we would kick it around together and he'd come back again with the next version, and so on until things were working smoothly on the factory floor.

My friend is still a great employee but now... He herds grocery carts.

My friend deserves better, but the manufacturing job is simply disappearing.

This man and others like him are the foundation of America's former economy. I say former, because America has turned it's back on the hardworking blue collar worker...In America, we don't make anything anymore except more money for rich people...and it''s hurting all of us...Even rich people, eventually.

America is starting to wake up and realize it, too:

...the big story here isn't Republican denial. It's the shattering of Americans' sense of a common identity in a time when the economy no longer promotes the general welfare. The world the New Deal built has been destroyed, and we are, as we were before the New Deal, two nations.

The article