America used to be a nation that produced world-quality products and exported the much-sought-after goods all over the globe. In a huge instance of not getting the point, a new generation of industrial executives decided to go one step further and export entire industries abroad. Didn't any of them have any close advisors to tell them, say, that maybe that's not the best idea they've ever come up with? The Department of Pointing Out the Obvious (DOPOTO) has conducted their annual 20-20 Vision Hindsight Report and reports that moving entire industries out of America has no benefit at all to non-wealthy Americans.
On the plus side, the lives of our wealthiest citizens are wonderful and getting better all the time. The companies they own employ work forces making less money per day than it takes to adopt a child from Sally Struthers, without all that bothersome letter-writing. Enterprising young executives are constantly circling the globe in search of the poorest possible nations in which to relocate their manufacturing operations. It seems that some of the workers in the original Third-World countries they moved to have demanded labor concessions, unreasonable requests like ending child labor, cutting back the work day from 15 hours to a lazy-man's pace of only 12 and asking for medical coverage for work-related amputations. Outraged Boards of Directors are asking Shotgun Dick Cheney to order air strikes.
In related news, DOPOTO reports that the Wal-Mart subsidiary China Incorporated has added a brand new sport to the Summer Olympics being held there this year. The sport is a new form of racing combined with acrobatics and martial arts. The object of the game is to see who can be the fastest and most graceful in twisting five Tibetan Monks into the shape of various Chines characters. Points will be awarded for speed, legibility and the quality of the monks' screams. It will be the first Olympic Sport in which no audience is allowed to watch the competition. The judges will be a panel consisting of high-ranking Chinese government officials, corporate officers from various American conglomerates and in a surprise move, Naomi Campbell, who will cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie. The new sport will be called Obedience Gymnastics.
The Department has learned that the United States is making great strides in increasing poverty levels among the working classes, bringing us more into line with other non-manufacturing nations. While falling short of the goal of matching the destitution index of the 1930's, optimism is running high in corporate boardrooms across the nation that with just a few more tax cuts to the super-wealthy and several more rounds of layoffs for non-essential personnel, such as actual workers, average Americans will soon consider a job at Wendy's to be a desirable career goal. A Blue-Ribbon Renaming Panel has come up with some more palatable suggestions for common terms. The homeless will be called Nomads, The American Dream will be renamed The American Fantasy and home foreclosures will be called Nomad Recruitment.