Electronics, Work, Earnings

Do you remember when a phone was big enough to commit murder with? When they were part of the themes in murder plots in movies and on TV? When they would serve very well as paper weights? When if you dropped one it would send you to the hospital for a broken toe, but would still work to call for the ambulance? When it couldn't be lost between the cushions of a chair or sofa?

When if a phone which sat on a table or hung on a wall had a ringing sound loud enough to be heard from your back yard? When it would actually wake you from a sound sleep if it rang? When you put a pillow over it so it wouldn't wake the baby you had just spent hours walking with and singing to trying to get to sleep? When on Saturday morning everyone in the house would run to answer it so dad could sleep in and not be in his usual grumpy mood?

When they had a dial that you actually could put the tip of your finger into to turn the desired number instead of the tiny little buttons that a finger can't help but push two or three of at a time?

When you had a phone book to look for the number you wanted to call? A book with tattered pages and turned down corners of best friends and frequently called numbers. A book that served equally well as a booster seat. A book that strong men would show off with by tearing them in half.

When you went out to play or on an adventure and your friends actually went with you instead of just keeping you on speed dial to pester you every ten minutes for an update on what you were doing?

When you could be watching a bird or a deer and you wouldn't have something in your pocket making noise to frighten them away? When they would ring and didn't play idiotic songs that would embarrass you in public?

When you could enjoy a meal at a restaurant without someone at the next table yelling into a tiny phone loud enough to be heard in the kitchen and then getting mad because you are listening, when there really is no way you can't?

Are you a member of the thousands of generations who have somehow managed to survive and do quit well without needing to be constantly connected to the world by a tiny little, nearly unusable device in your pocket, your purse or tethered to your body?

Do you realize that as we squawk about having no work here in the United States that all those phones and gizmos may be designed here, but are made in China who is now taking all the money from us because of our desire to have them?

Do you realize that because of flooding in a foreign country there is now a shortage of hard drives and other electronic devices? That the prices are soaring because of the shortages? That those too come from other countries while our people have no work?

I just can't understand how we can carry a grudge against some we love for years. How we can refuse to so much as to help them and yet we can't refuse to buy products until the companies return home so we can have some work.

We need fun. We need families. We need friends. We do not need to be constantly connected and broke. We need food. We need to have work to buy that food. We need homes and work to pay for those homes.

Is it any wonder why when we call because those devices don't work that we get nothing but a run around? When to actually get to the source of the product we must run around the world!

Hmm, do we all need to move to those countries to have a job?

Or do we need to get tough and refuse to buy what we can do without until we can buy them from people here who make them...

There really is no reason that each country can't have a smaller manufacturing facility to make the same or very similar product. Even if the same company owns them all. Then in the least we would be earning money to have it to spend...