Where Have All the (Blow)jobs Gone?

I love that movie The Grapes of Wrath starring Henry Fonda. In the story, Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) has a hard time not killing people. His mom never seems to get this, and in her tearful goodbye to him just after he (again) kills another guy, you just wonder why she doesn’t say: “Hey, Tom, whatever you do on that road – quit killing people!”

The movie was filmed in 1940, with the country still stuck in an economic hole and about to stumble its way into World War II.

The irony is that months after the movie came out, a lot of Tom Joads were getting drafted into the service and about to be sent all over the world killing people. And they were going to do it to save the system that had made them and their families poor, homeless drifters.

The war literally transformed these guys from losers to heros in the eyes of a grateful nation. They had gone from Tom Joads to GI Joes.

After the war, they cashed in their broken down trucks for fancy new cars, built by well-paid workers. They traded in their tent cities for the suburbs, with their rows and rows of new houses.

I’ve got this theory that after World War II, the prosperity that was shared nationally with the worker – the ever increasing standard of living that was the wonder of the world – was in no small part due to the fact that the common citizen basically put his grievances aside and bailed out a bankrupt nation that had been sent into depression by the gambling and recklessness of the elite.

All of sudden Tom Joad shouldn’t be drifting around the nation with his starving family. Maybe he should get a little house someplace, a pension, a wage that he could live on. Maybe there was a new awareness on the part of the nation — these common guys really saved our asses, and deserve a little piece of the pie.

The 50s, 60s and 70s ushered in prosperity like the world had never seen. Not many people know this, but it was during this period that “the blowjob” was invented, and the typical worker had never been happier. It was invented in Detroit.

And coincidentally, the county was bent on protecting its workers, because – after all – they had protected the country.

Then suddenly, in the 80s, these guys were the enemy. They had their days off and their health care? What the fuck? They were all driving fancy cars built by well-paid workers, and living in the suburbs. Why did they get all that?

(Also, blowjobs started becoming more rare. Coincidence? Maybe.)

Trade tariffs that had protected workers were suddenly “evil.” It was better to let other nations have those jobs. Nevermind that those tariffs had worked flawlessly for decades and made the United States the powerhouse of the globe in all aspects of industry, education, finance, standard of living – everything … Yes, including blowjobs.

You notice how you never hear cities and states trumpeting that jobs should go someplace else if they can make things more efficiently. That’s because they get it – you can’t tax them someplace else. They are working overtime to keep employers in their grasp.

But at the national level, oh, sends the jobs away – quickly, the faster the better. We’ll all benefit.

The idea behind the tariffs was pretty simple: You’re welcome to build things anywhere on the globe you please, but if you wanted to sell them in the biggest economy in the world – and get paid in dollars, the reserve currency — then you often had to pay a tax at the door.

It’s kind of like the difference between getting into a good bar and a shitty bar – you’re willing to pay the cover.

The tax went to fund the government.

There was a simple way to avoid the tax; build your shit right here in this country. And firms like Honda and Toyota were building plants here to avoid it. That way, the government would collect its tax from the workers and the corporations. But either way, the government got paid.

Under our new system of “free trade,” the government doesn’t get paid either way – nothing at the door, and no workers’ incomes to tax as, coincidentally, everyone is rushing to relocate jobs oversees. And guess what, that new Toyota plant is going to Mexico – not here. Why not? They’d have to be idiots not to under this system.

Is it any wonder that the federal government now must borrow a trillion dollars a year just to pay its bills? Is it any wonder that the communist Chinese are now keeping the lights on at the Capitol and the White House by purchasing our ever-growing debt? That’s right, the fucking communists are paying the bills for the world’s beacon of capitalism.

It’s almost like it was all a big blowjob. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

…Well, that’s for you to decide.