Thomas Jefferson implied that the new nation should remain essentially agrarian and let the mother country do most of the dirty work in manufacturing. Although we are by no means agrarian now, we certainly are primarily a service industry while foreign countries do the kind of work Jefferson had little use for. That the largest employer in the nation is a retail giant says something about how far we have lost the will to produce our own goods. Why, even in what was once the national game, we import athletes from the Caribbean. True, Hollywood is still the largest film-making industry in the world, yet often move their productions overseas or across the northern border. We are still ahead in intellectual properties, but that is dwindling, too, and subject to piracy abroad. The last line of defense is in the building industry, defense, and mining wherein production is home-bred. The garment industry relies almost totally on imports, except for the remaining sweat shops where work is primarily done by immigrants.

It is remarkable that this inbreeding of services can sustain itself — auto salesman buys at Wal-Mart if the Wal-Mart worker buys a car — it is immaterial that this consumer economy must rely on consumptive wages, particularly since — dwarfing entitlements — the credit card and equity loans, the super nannies, are readily available. Short of an all-out war wherein we shall have to scramble to restore our industrial base, will there ever be a day of reckoning? Yes, but not in our time, for, we have saddled ensuing generations to ante up.