Sometimes people just stop getting bene's - implying they've been out of a job too long, or they're demoralized, or they no longer qualify, etc. OTOH, it can also mean they start pursuing/startin their own businesses. If it's the latter, that's better than them having a "corporate" job, as entrenpreneurs are what makes this country tick - not the GE/GM/Ford/AT&T/MSFT's - etc.

Fat Kid -

That presumes that the entrepreneur lawyer concocting a new approach to class action lawsuits or the entrepreneur housewife that opens the 3rd "shoppe" in town selling scented candles made in Pakistan contributes more to America's standard of living than the non-entrepreneural guy on a team of 300 at GE making next generation aircraft turbines.

Most entrepreneurs do not create new wealth, but succeed by getting a slice of the wealth of others.

Real American wealth is created by the guy in the (disappearing) American factory that finds a way to do it faster, cheaper, or with better quality control. The university scientists who take 20 years of government funding their efforts in a new technology field and do a high tech start-up. The nameless non-entrepreneurs on the GE new turbine team that create the engine that has 12 billion in sales over the engine's 15 year sales period. Or the banker that approves the investment that adds new productive business, jobs, income to the local economy, and tax base to a city.

One big problem with Bush was he also believed that the stock market would soar and massive job creation would be generated if only he could give massive tax cuts to well-off entrepreneural "Doer-folk". It hasn't worked out. America's prosperity does not rest on the folks featured on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine. Entrepreneurship is just one component of a list of economic factors at work in a nation with a rising standard of living.

Real American wealth is created by the guy in the (disappearing) American factory that finds a way to do it faster, cheaper, or with better quality control.

True, and our standard of living is diminishing as we lose those jobs, and it shall continue to decline until we reach the "world wage" level. I find this as distressing as anyone, but if there is another way, I wish someone would tell me about it for I can see no other.

I find this as distressing as anyone,

Even more distressing is the fact that there is not even any discussion about it anymore. It's as if we just completely lost our collective will to hang onto as many manufacturing jobs as we can for as long as we possibly can.

There are more kinds of manufacturing than working in a factory producing physical objects, and that intellectual manufacturing is where our economy is moving. I sit at a desk, part of a software development team and I produce tangible value as much, or really more, than I did when I worked in a factory or on a farm.

The western economies have an advantage in intellectual capital that enables us to ship physical manufacturing to markets with less intellectual capital and still maintain a thriving economy.

At least for the time being. It does not seem to me that we are fostering the growth in intellectual capital as we should. We undervalue education and THAT is what has the potential to reduce us to 72's "world wage" level.

Yeah, I don't see the advantage of hanging on to manufacturing jobs as long as we can if eventually we lose them anyway. Wouldn't it make more sense to let people deploy themselves as quickly as possible into the most productive alternatives?