Just reading this list is exhausting.

While these acts have beneficial and protective aspects, they have also encouraged businesses to move their facilities. That "sucking sound" popularized by Ross Perot is not just down to Mexico, but elsewhere as well. The result has been a dramatic loss of heavy industry in the U.S.

The young and the middle-aged alike are realizing that their dream of "having a job with a company forever" is an illusion. Companies have been downsizing, rightsizing, and capsizing for some time now, and they continue to do so-more now than ever before. Even the federal and state governments are getting into the act with layoffs and attrition of jobs.

In addition to all this uncertainty and mutual lack of loyalty between companies and employees, even the workers who do keep their jobs have no guarantee of promotions due to the shrinking number of management positions. These circumstances aggravate the already tryingly long commutes in rush hour traffic and increasingly typical frustrated boss-spelled backwards, that double S-O-B.

Finally, if all this isn't bad enough, under recent tax laws employees are shafted more than ever with limits and thresholds for their employee deductions and higher social security tax limits. This results in more couples working than ever before and, on many occasions, working more than one job. It is now almost impossible to have only one job in the family and make ends meet! Today, many households need three incomes just to survive.

Sadly, even having more than one job does not produce any major positive effect on most people's bank accounts. Why? Because of tax laws. This was well illustrated in 1994 by Jane Bryant Quinn in her Woman's Day article on "How to Live on One Salary."

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