Computers, ATM's, email, cell phones, ipods, ipads, ebooks....Progress.

Many years back, progress was a good thing. Ships, planes, automobiles, tractors, gas and electric power tools and appliances made life a bit easier, yet you still had to do the work over many hours or days. We manufactured most of the products ourselves, here in the United States.

The telephone made it easier to communicate long and short distance. But we lost touch with our writing skills and penmanship. We have even outsourced our U.S. businesses customer service, and often talk to people from other countries to fix an issue with a local business or product.

Electronics Age: Though the product itself is wonderful and convenient. It has left us in the dust as far as employment. Relegating some to dinosaur-hood. With computers, came less paper work, so we needed fewer people to handle the tasks at hand. It also affected many outside the obvious employment. Paper mills, printing presses, collators, binders, transporters of the products...no longer needed. Much of the electronics produced outside the U.S.

We are progressing ourselves right out of employment. The older generations hardly stand a chance in this former futuristic idea, that most thought would take a while to really catch on... or even believe we could do this to ourselves. So here we sit, with unemployment at such a high rate.

I have so many friends that are unemployed, and with very little chance at finding a full time, decent paying job. Not for lack of skills, but lack of opportunity. Wages haven't kept up with the times either. They are frightened for the future of their families. How they will survive. Homes in jeopardy of foreclosure. Hard working business owners are falling by the wayside. Employment benefits exhausted. They have lost their American Dream.

My husband made his weekly visit to our local bank to cash his paycheck. He walks up to the tellers window. The teller says to him that he should use the ATM, because it is "more convenient, very easy And safe." At which point my husband asked, "Don't you want to keep your job?" The teller looked at him a bit puzzled, then says it is what her bank manager instructs them to say...that was several weeks back. This week she is gone, no longer employed by the bank. They downsized cause they no longer needed her services, along with a few others....progress.