The announcement

that Thomaston Mills will close its doors after 102 years in the textile

manufacturing business should register more than a blip on our economic

radar screens.

Thomaston Mills

is just one of many American textile firms hoping for some hail Mary financial

investor to infuse their dying companies with capital to meet "do

or die" loan payment deadlines. Seven hundred people lost jobs two

years ago, another 100 were laid off this past February, 550 received

their last "paychecks" in cash Friday, and the remaining 1,400

or so employees will be let go Aug. 1, barring some miracle that probably

won't come.

People with

30 and 40 years of employment are, from one day to the next, without pay,

retirement or insurance. Many with little education are left with few

options. A sign of the times yes, but this 70 miles south small town economic

disaster could be anytown, U.S.A., and has been for thousands and thousands

of American workers in the past decade of "open the floodgates"

global trade.

Some may view

the shutdown of American textile producers as a natural progression in

our shift from an industry-based economy to one that is technology-based,

but American textiles embraced technology by investing millions in high-tech

equipment that allowed them to produce a better product faster with fewer

people.

Servicing the

debt on the high-tech capital improvements and trying to compete with

an overseas market that doesn't play by the same rules is increasingly

impossible. Even the best turn-around CEOs are conceding that it can't

be done.

Most Americans

can't relate. Metropolitan movers and shakers want the lowest price for

the best product and waste no energy waxing philosophical over where that

product was produced, under what conditions, or by whom. That's free market

capitalism, right?

But it is precisely

this dilemma that has caused the most unlikely players to merge their

agendas at massive protests of meetings of the World Trade Organization.

Remember Seattle? Where else can you see anarchists, labor unions, humanitarians,

American isolationists, conservatives and environmental advocates united

under a single banner, calling for global reason and fairness in global

trade?

What is happening

in Thomaston, Ga., has everything to do with what is happening and has

happened in the streets of Seattle, New York, Washington, and all over

Europe. Global trade is causing global problems. Who can compete with

textile manufacturers in Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, China, Taiwan, India

and other global markets that pay their workers a fraction of what American

workers need to sustain themselves in this market.

Few Americans

would be willing to trade our quality of life with the quality of life

of the average textile worker overseas, but we have no problem buying

that eight-dollar garment off the rack in America's discount stores. We

fret not over what market conditions or worker conditions allowed that

garment to be produced, transported and sold here, complete with a profit

for each leg of the journey, at eight dollars a pop.

The lure of

the global market is that there are multiple beneficiaries. Big multinational

corporations can boost profits and productivity by shipping manufacturing

jobs overseas, where government safety regulations and employee compensation

levels are scant by American standards. Emerging overseas economies are

boosted by the influx of investment capital and export income.

American consumers,

and in fact global consumers, pay less for goods. All of these forces

conspire to perpetuate an economic "ideal" that will likely

in the long run prove less than ideal for American workers. Add to that

the fact that much of the globe makes sport of hating Americans. They

think we are capitalist consumer pigs who have only achieved economic

superiority by squashing the rest of the the world. But did we? Or was

our economy the product of ingenuity, hard work, innovation, and a dream

for a better life right here at home.

Are we obligated

to trade all of that so that the rest of the world can have it too, at

our expense? Just ask those folks in Thomaston. We can't have it all.

We can't maintain our standard of living in a global market. We can't

buy cheap and live big forever. Eventually buying cheap from overseas

markets will require living cheap in our own cheap market.

Today it is

the textile jobs. Tomorrow, after all of the previously unindustrialized

nations are industrialized, it will be the tech jobs your jobs. Think

of it as two glasses of water, with water being a finite resource. If

you pour water from one glass into the second glass, you raise the level

in the second glass, while lowering the level of the first. That's physics

AND economics, and that's us.

Coming soon

to a job near you.

Your comments

are welcome at: [email protected].