Leadership in Action: Dividends and Interest - The Health Care Crisis, Close to Home

BLEAK OUTLOOK

This is not the case for everyone. Take, for example, people in Davidson County, North Carolina. Davidson was once synonymous with America's manufacturing of wooden furniture—called case goods in the trade—and its two largest towns, Lexington and Thomasville, were the epicenter of the industry.

Crushed by the rise in imported furniture, Davidson has faced staggering job losses since the early 1990s—more than ten thousand in the furniture industry alone. It's now estimated that upward of 75 percent of case goods sold in the United States are imported. Davidson has also suffered steep losses in the textile and tobacco-farming industries, so the employment outlook in the county is bleak.

As jobs go away, however, the county's need ...