Jim Hightower

To know which way the economic winds are blowing, just check such newspaper headlines as these: "Underemployed and Underpaid," "Shrinking Consumers," "Economy Leaving Lost Generation."

This devastating economic hurricane is not the natural product of market forces, as the financial elite want us to believe. Rather it's a direct hit from the ethos of plutocratic greed that now prevails among a cabal of our country's corporate and governmental decision makers. They keep putting the short-term, selfish interests of the few over the future well-being of America's many -­ national interest be damned.

Another recent headline offers a galling example of this shortsighted avarice in action: "China Takes Tech Tips from Silicon Valley." The story behind the headline is that Chinese officials have launched a crash program to zoom their country into the lead of the world's "knowledge economy," by surpassing our country as the entrepreneurial innovator and owner of the high-tech future. And, guess who's helping them make this Great Leap Forward over the USA? Our own venture capitalists, corporate executives, and university officials, that's who.

You might recall that only a dozen years ago, America's middle-class workers were told not to worry about the offshoring of their good-paying manufacturing jobs, because their future lay in the new knowledge-based economy. As we now see, that was a lie, for Silicon Valley itself is presently hightailing it to China.

China. Chasing quick profits for themselves, U.S. firms are transferring our technical knowledge, competitive edge, and middle class future nearly 7,000 miles away from us. Why is this crass betrayal of America's workaday families not even being talked about in this year's elections? To help raise hell, go to: www.AmericanManufacturing.org.