At this writing, it is close to six months since Chrysler announced the new engines slated for production at the Kenosha plant will instead be built in Mexico. By now, our representatives in Washington have probably stopped wringing their hands over the loss.

A few months after the Chrysler announcement, 1,100 workers at the Whirlpool plant in Evansville, Ind., learned their jobs were also moving to Mexico.

Like the 600-plus workers at Chrysler, Whirlpool employees will stop paying state and federal taxes. And, like the hundreds of thousands of other workers who have seen their jobs outsourced, they will “contribute” to the predicted Social Security shortfall in 2010 and 2011.

Think about it.

Some politicians and organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce blame our educational system for our inability to compete in the global economy. There are problems in education and to its credit, the Obama administration is attempting to fix some of them. But let’s get real. I don’t care if our high school and college graduates left school with the smarts of a Ph.D. degree; there’s no way they can compete with workers making 25 cents or even a dollar an hour.

We need new thinking, a new approach to world economics, if our country is to survive industrially and militarily. Does our present crop of politicians have the desire, the ability and the courage to chart a new course? I’m not optimistic.

Maybe it’s time to say “shape up or ship out” (Navy talk).

Edwin M. Andersen