It's not easy being green, even before Earth Day

When she started to turn green, I wondered if my wife had decided to celebrate Earth Day a little early. She didn't turn green all over, like Marta the Orion slave girl from Star Trek who was played by Taylorville's Yvonne Craig (yes of course I had to look it up), but just on the backs of her fingers. It became more puzzling when we realized that you don't actually do much with the backs of your fingers. They're mostly there to give the fronts something to stick on to.

Yet day after day her fingers would turn green. The color would scrub off, but show up again the next day. Well, she's a pretty good detective and soon discovered that the source of the color was those little elastic bands that she often uses to keep her hair out of the way, the things the cat likes to play with. They had been dyed with the wrong dye and so much of it that, when she dropped one in a glass of water, you could hardly see through it for the color.

The reason for such things, we are told, is that we are in a "global economy,'' and the days of quality products you can trust is over.

Good products supposedly can't compete with those made in countries where they abuse their workers like we used to abuse ours a hundred years ago. Nor, they claim, is it practical to inspect products made abroad, especially in the People's Republic of China.

Nonsense. I'll point out that it apparently is practical in the Republic of China (Taiwan), which is equally Chinese but manages not to sell us poisonous toothpaste, toxic dog food, lead-painted toys, and heparin with fake ingredients to which patients are allergic.

In fact, we have to be in a global economy only to the extent that we want to and that it's good for us. Most of the time it's not. It may be that the big shots have convinced most people that it is our obligation to shop our heads off and keep multinational corporations in business by buying things we don't need with money we don't have, but it's not. Nor is it our obligation to finance corruption abroad or help the emerging world by lowering our standard of living while they raise theirs until we meet somewhere below the middle. You don't notice corporate executives doing that, do you?

Part of the mythology is that we don't make things anymore. Actually, American manufacturing is doing better than ever, although advances in productivity admittedly mean that fewer hands are required to make most products. The politicians call that a loss and promise to pass laws to stop it.

But what we have lost is not jobs but the inventors and entrepreneurs to put those excess hands to work.

What we've lost is our determination to educate ourselves for success.

What we've lost is our appreciation and demand for quality and durability.

What we've lost is the energy to seek out products and foods that are produced locally.

What we've lost is the ingenuity and courage that used to characterize this country.

That's why - when a seemingly harmless clothing product turns your hair, your fingers, and the cat green - it's important to blame the right people.

Bill Mego's column is published each Thursday. Contact him at bill.mego@sbcglobal.net.