America, leave it.
A year or two back Mega-Omni Corp. told its employees they had a wonderful new employment option. Move to a randomly-assigned foreign country at half pay or be cut loose.
More recently GloboPlex proudly announced that because of the rebounding U.S. economy they would start adding thousands of new jobs in Singapore.
A lot of Americans, enticed by the giant sucking sound but skittish of continuing to work for corporate overlords, are trying the idea on for size.
For example, take an engineer with six or eight years of college and 25 years of experience. Obviously this person is unemployable in the United States because:
- They've seen every kind of crap there is to see, and won't take it anymore,
- They want to try doing something fun for a change, and
- While having fun they want to make a difference, and
- Education and experience make them too expensive to keep on the payroll.
All good reasons to bail.
All kinds of people are doing this, not just engineers. Accountants, plumbers, doctors, bus drivers, professors, librarians, electricians. You name it, especially if they're over 40. You know what they say: "Too old to work, too young to compost."
So these people, a lot of whom have Social Security checks amounting to a few hundred dollars a month and boxes full of unfulfilled promises from former employers and government, are vacating the premises.
If they were 20 or 30 years younger and foreigners, they'd have corporate sponsors pounding on the doors of Congress to let them into the U.S. as contract workers. But since these people are experienced adult citizens it looks like their best chances for a life are elsewhere.
In a press conference about its Singapore move GloboPlex spokesman Bert Stench said, "We've outsourced just about everything. Maybe we have to start putting people on planes and dumping them at sea. We're working on it as we speak."
Meanwhile things are happening in other countries. "There's a feeling among more entrepreneurial Americans that if you really want to get anything done, you have to get out of country and away from the depressing atmosphere," said Bob Adams of America Wave.
He lives in Panama.