Welcome to America - a “would you like fries with that?” kind of nation.

Yes - we won World War 2 - we won the space race - and our economic empire outlasted the Soviet Union - but today - those accomplishments are all in the distant past - belonging to a nation that is wildly different from the one we all live in today.

New job numbers released show that we added about 240,000 jobs to the economy last month - barely enough to keep up pace with new job seekers - and short of the 300,000 a month needed to fill the massive hole blasted into our job market by the Great Bush recession.

But have no fear - McDonalds will save us - or at least a few of us. Last week - after reviewing over 1 million applications from the desperately unemployed - McDonalds announced it would hire 60,000 new people to flip burgers. 60,000 new hires out of one million job seekers - you have a better chance getting into Harvard than getting a job at McDonalds right now - that’s just how bad things are for the unemployed in America.

So how did we get here? How did we get to a point where America doesn’t manufacture anything anymore except for war machines that can only be exploded once - and burgers and French fries than can only be eaten once?

What happened to building things that LAST - bridges - roads - schools - the HOOVER DAM - things that add wealth to our economy?

For the answer to that - we have to go ALL the way back to the dark days of World War 2.

In 1944 - as the war was finally turning against Hitler and he was ramping up his extermination of Jews in concentration camps across Germany - economists and financial representatives of 44 nations arrived in Bretton Wood, New Hampshire to have a meeting. They wanted to figure out a way to make sure the entire world doesn’t again suffer a Great Depression as it did in the previous decade - a Depression that gave birth to Hitler’s Germany.

And out of that meeting - an agreement was reached that spawned the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank - it essentially laid the ground work for a new global economy and for something we know very well today… so-called global Free Trade.

But it would take about 50 years for this agreement to be fully ratified by the United States Congress. That's because lawmakers - for decades - were worried that the Bretton Woods treaty was part of a worldwide communist conspiracy - to create global rule.

There were also worries that treaties are inherently dangerous since the Constitution says they trump both federal and local laws - and thus diminish the sovereignty of the United States. But after enough time - corporations with their newfound personhood - were gaining more and more influence in the halls of Congress. And when these corporations looked at Free Trade - they saw nothing but dollar signs - new cheap-labor pools and new emerging markets.

Who cares if America was hurt by outsourcing - these corporations would be reeling in massive profits. And profits - not patriotism - were the name of the game.

So after 50 years - in November of 1994 - with heavy pressure from transnational corporate campaign donors - our Congress ratified the Bretton Woods Agreement - with most Members of Congress not even reading the treaty - and the World Trade Organization was created.

And as Ross Perot famously warned in the 1992 Presidential debates about free trade - there would immediately be "a giant sucking sound" of jobs leaving American and ending up elsewhere around the world.

In just two years after America jumped into Free Trade with the WTO - more than 420,000 jobs vanished and $28 billion worth of business was lost - it was pretty clear early-on that we got ourselves into a bad deal - but we kept right on with more free trade agreements - more bad deals.

Today - more than 20 million jobs have been lost as a result - and we currently have the second highest trade deficit - as in we are buying more things from the world than we are selling - ever recorded in the history of the world. The highest recorded trade deficit was in Italy in 1924 - and the economic damage that did to Italy led right straight to fascist Benito Mussolini taking power.

Another consequence of these free trade treaties - is that foreign governments and corporations could sue us and force us to change our laws for their benefit. So not only do corporations have the rights of people - yet none of the vulnerabilities - as in they don't need to eat - they don't die - and they can't go to jail - but corporations are also now more powerful than sovereign governments.

They can force us to change our laws to maximize their profits.

Federal and local laws against products that exploited child labor - products that exploited the environment and nature - and products that exploited the health of those who used them, like asbestos - were all struck down after we joined the WTO - giving foreign corporations and governments free reign to race to the bottom to see who could sell the world more toxic junk for the lowest prices and highest profits.

That's Free Trade for you.

And America is quickly becoming the bottom. We can only offer up cruise missiles and fighter jets now - meaning that our economy is dependent upon perpetual war - which is a problem that even our fourth president James Madison warned us of when he said, "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of perpetual warfare".

And aside from weapons of mass destruction - our only other option is making french fries - and thankfully McDonalds is stepping up to hire a few thousand workers to help our economy. I guess we'll overlook how we're all becoming obese and developing hypertension and diabetes from fast food.

But look on the bright side - once things get REALLY bad - all the corporations that used to build things in America will come crawling back - looking for desperate low-wage workers. But let's hope that before that happens - a political party will stand up in America and usher our wounded nation out of these so-called free trade agreements.

A political party that'll protect US industry again with tariffs - close tax loopholes for job outsourcers - and reinvest in a new American infrastructure that makes all US businesses more profitable.

A Party that demands we make things in the USA again.

It's what we used to do for more than 200 years - from the founding of our nation until we fell for the scheme of free trade sold to us by greedy transnational corporations.

Only when that happens - when real people stand up to corporate people and say "no more" - will we once again become a nation that knows how to go to the moon - and not one that only knows what temperature to fry French fries in.

That's The Big Picture.