VK,

First of all, hope you're feeling better and on the mend. Take care.

Second, in many ways we are very much an enigma here. TV is a "services industry" place - we don't make anything and there is no need to. We are not reliant on a pyramid economy, and support the surrounding area

Unfortunately, this economic mess is the result of the nation looking blindly at a few things, and being greedy on the other. We support most of world's manufacturing (especially Communist countries which pay pittance to workers) by importing their products and letting them be sold at prices much less than what the same or similar goods cost to be made in the US. That has sent the manufacturing jobs elsewhere, because manufacturers wanting to keep the US market learned the only way to compete with foreign manufacturers was to join them overseas.

The services industry is twofold - Information services (e.g., call-in) and hands on (e.g. fix it). The former is all but gone, thanks to the Internet, as it is cheaper to provide the call in services from areas where $1/hour is a decent wage. Again, we have shot ourselves in the foot.

To make matters worse, many employers, in order to be cost-competitive, have ignored US workers in entirely and employ mainly illegal aliens who will take any job at any pay and get few (if any) benefits or protections. When raids on such businesses occur, there is a liberal outcry on how we are being "insensitive" to the plight of the illegal alien - yet no one seems to care what's happening to the American worker until the American worker no longer can afford to buy Chinese-made goods or pay taxes to support the "entitlement" bunch.

Yes, we are lucky in The VIllages, but we did work and save for it, often doing without many things that others considered as being necessities of life. That's why we can afford to be here now.