If you were born in Aberdeen in the 1970s, your parents were probably counting on a good future for you.

The timber-based economy was humming, the unions representing timber workers made sure that wages and benefits were good and the tax base supported strong schools. The spin-off economic activity from the timber industry and the strong public sector created more jobs and greater economic opportunity.

Who would have thought that in 2005, Grays Harbor County would be “celebrating” the 25th anniversary of economic stagnation? But that reverse milestone was reached this year, capped off with Weyerhaeuser’s announcement last month that it was closing two more mills, one in Aberdeen and one in Cosmopolis, eliminating 342 jobs.

This is the reality of a rural economy that has been bypassed by high-tech economic development and has had its heart ripped out by globalization.

Here are some cold facts. Between 1970 and 1980, the Grays Harbor work force increased 45 percent. By 2000, one out of four workers from the 1980 peak just “disappeared.” Fully half of the county’s manufacturing jobs have vanished in the past 25 years. Average wages peaked at $33,000 in 1981 and fell to less than $27,000 in 2000.

John Warring, the head of the Labor Council in Grays Harbor and a member of the local work force development council, told me, “In the ’60s and ’70s many of our young people skipped post-high school education because they could make more money in the mills. Now, ‘free’ trade has put downward pressure on wages at the same time less money is in the social safety net and the cost of education skyrockets.”

Think about that – we tell students that they have to go to college to get ahead. But in the 1970s, tuition at the nearest state college – Evergreen – was a little under $500 a year. Now Evergreen tuition totals 10 times that much.

Globalization is not a new trend for the forest products industry. Back in the 1960s, Weyerhaeuser was shaping itself as a multinational corporation, with timber harvests in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, not to mention southeast United States and Canada. As the company increased productivity; fewer workers were needed to process the same amount of timber. After the 1981-82 recession, timber production picked up in Grays Harbor, but timber mill jobs did not come back.

That same dynamic continues. Weyerhaeuser is investing in and producing timber from Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Uruguay. And while last year lumber production in Washington was the highest since 1930, still the jobs are not coming back.

Wall Street is compounding the impact of globalization by demanding short-term profit maximization. That’s why Weyerhaeuser has decided to buy back up to 18 million of its own shares. At the current stock price, that will take more than $1 billion. But it raises the price of the remaining outstanding stock, increasing shareholder wealth.

Something is wrong here. The pulp mill in Cosmopolis that Weyerhaeuser wants to shut down is actually making money. Is Weyerhaeuser trading away good jobs that create profits to keep already wealthy shareholders content?

That’s what leaders in Grays Harbor are wrestling with. State Sen. Jim Hargrove, the Grays Harbor Economic Development Council, the Twin Harbors Labor Council, the governor and House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler are all stepping up to the plate to keep that pulp mill open. It is profitable. Even if Weyerhaeuser abandons it, there may be a way to keep it going, keep those jobs and keep that investment in the community.

From the relative prosperity of the Puget Sound area it may be easy to turn our backs on the timber counties. But they are not artifacts of a previous century. If anything, they are the canary in the mine for the rest of us. We can’t run an economy solely on tourism, home sales and service jobs. We can’t passively accept job losses, lower wages and benefit cuts as unfortunate but necessary byproducts of globalization and short-term profit maximization.

We have to figure out how we want to build our economy and keep and create good-paying jobs for the future. That’s what the folks in Grays Harbor are trying to do. But drive down the main street in Hoquiam, and you will see a town that still struggles with mill closures that occurred decades ago.

Enough is enough. If we don’t learn that lesson from Grays Harbor, then we will all be pawns, not players, by the middle of this century.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.