This has been a problem for a long time now. China manipulating their currency to cost Americans manufacturing jobs and cause a huge trade deficit for our country. It also drives down wages as greedy corporations take advantage of the virtual slave labor pool that exists among the oppressed people in Communist China. Of course, with so many "leaders" in our Congress like the Senator for Communist China Mitch McConnell it is no surprise nothing has been done. Now, July 13 is National call in day to tell Congress to end Chinese currency manipulation.
One thing that has been lost in the shuffle through decades of free trade zealously is the simple fact that it matters where things are made. With the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs and the closures of hundreds of thousands of factories the ability of our country to innovate and to make the products we consume has been greatly diminished. This in turn has shrunken our middle-class to disasterous levels.
When it comes to getting around, Americans love to consider the question of “what if…?”
As a result, our cars have evolved into “land yachts”, our trucks have become “monster trucks”, and the desire to drag our living spaces around with us has morphed into converted busses with rooms that pop out of the side, a Mini-Cooper hidden under the master bedroom floor, and self-tracking satellite dishes that fight for space on the roof with air conditioning equipment.
And for more than a few of us, “what if…?” has even extended to “what if my car…was a jet car?”
In today’s improbable reality I’m here to tell you that Chrysler engineers asked that exact same question, for roughly a quarter of a century, and as a result they actually designed and deployed seven generations of cars with jet engines—and they came darn close to putting the eighth-generation design on sale to the general public.
It’s a story of pocket protectors and slide rules and offices full of guys who look a bit like Drew Carey…but as we’ll see in Part Two, it may also be a story of technology that couldn’t be perfected “back then”, but could be reborn in our own times.
Everyone knows that tomorrow is Labor Day. Many have already partied all weekend and are looking foward to an extra day tomorrow to recover. Across the country tomorrow there will be countless parades and festivities to mark the sacrifices of workers in building this nation on a day that came to life when Grover Cleveland signed a bill in in response to numerous workers being killed by the military and the US Marshalls during the Pullman strike and has been the marker for the ending of summer every since.
