Page 22 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • November 16, 2011 could do in any county. We need a fair minimum wage so people who can land any job at all can support themselves without further reliance on the rest of the taxpayers. When underpaid people qualify for special programs, guess who pays for them: people who receive decent pay until the tax man comes for it. The wages offered at a lot of bottom-line jobs are so low that the workers are better off collecting unemployment until they can scrape through to Social Security or qualify for some kind of disability or for wholesale public assistance of the type that should be available to people who can’t work – not those who simply don’t want to work. Northwest Bergen County is generally an exception, but our great nation includes plenty of people in both categories. You know the system has failed you, because of racism, bad schools, or the extinction of the sort of job you do best, so you find a way to ride it out by reducing your expectations and getting by on what a grateful administrator offers you to buy your vote, nurture future expendables for overseas military adventures, or fend off revolution. This happens all over the world. It’s happening here. People who can’t make it by working and can sort of make it by not working don’t even have to think about their best course. The only answer for America is to make the employers cover the entire cost of their employees. After all, the employers are the ones making the money. Money is a bad master, but a very good motivator. We also have to stop touting education as the answer to all our economic problems. People whose abilities or tastes don’t qualify them for four-year colleges probably won’t be able to find useful employment even if the government taxes the rest of us right into the poorhouse to cover what appears to be the two mandatory college degrees for an entry-level, white-collar job. A couple of years ago, WQXR, the last classical music radio station in the tri-state area, almost went out of business because the government cut its subsidies. PBS also teetered near the brink. Both of these valuable cultural resources survived because people donated their own money to keep them afloat. Those shows subsidized by the government are something else again. We celebrate the Fourth of July, for instance, with rousing patriotic songs by those who have never worn a uniform but know waving the flag and hating scary foreigners is good for business. We hear celebrations of the very genuine courage of Americans wounded or killed fighting in the Pacific, Asia, and Iraq, and we are told that they were hurt and their friends were killed protecting the United States. People in positions of authority say things like, “If it weren’t for you guys, we wouldn’t be speaking English.” Neither the Germans nor the Japanese ever developed a plausible four-engine bomber, while we developed three: the B-17 like the one my senior cousin was killed in over Germany in 1944; the B-24 like the one my older buddy John Pangburn bailed out of that same year near New Guinea, only to see his own buddies eaten by sharks; and the B-29 that burned the house my wife grew up in and a lot of women and children in the neighborhood. Could it be that the Germans and the Japanese had no ambitions outside their own vicinities? Could it be that we invented these ambitions to trick brave men into getting killed for no good reason, and to explain atrocities afterwards? Somebody show me a map of the landings the North Vietnamese or the North Koreans were able to effect on the North American continent. What chance did Saddam Hussein ever have of dictating peace terms in the White House? If we hadn’t thrown away 6,000 brave, worthwhile, and trusting young Americans this last time around in what we now know was a mistake, we would be out there in the streets of Allendale and Waldwick and Wyckoff fighting sword-wielding Tuaregs on camels rather than have them force our wives and daughters to wear veils, while Kim Il Sung and Ho Chi Minh glowered down at us from Mount Rushmore, right? The government subsidizes propaganda for the masses and the smart people pay for Beethoven and Mozart and documentaries (like “The War”) which offer an honest look at what actually happened and admit that atrocities were committed by people on both sides. The good and bad news is that the majority of American people, generous, trusting, and brave as they are, have begun to register their extreme distaste for any more foreign adventures at the behest of international corporations or self-serving foreign governments. In the short run, this could be bad for the economy, because weapons systems are among America’s few salable products. In the long run, it would be good for the survival of civilization. We need to do the same thing with jobs that we do with entertainment. Everybody who does useful work should get paid a living wage, and the cost should come not from the taxpayers but from the whopping salaries the people at the top pay themselves and their favorites. We can do this. The American submarine may be on the bottom right now, but the oil slick we’re exuding could just be a clever deception – or a warning that we’re done milking the taxpayers to bribe tyrants we can’t trust and support people who don’t support us. This time, when we blow ballast – without any more bailouts to bankrupt banks and corporations that can’t cope -- we should plan to avoid any more crash dives by establishing higher wages and lower taxes so people who want to can afford to buy American. Have you ever seen those movies where the captain and crew take their submarine all the way to the bottom of the ocean while they send up an oil slick and random rubble so the other guys think they’re finished? That’s where the American economy is right now. Official figures show that we’re at nine point something unemployment. That’s bogus. What happened is that so many people have been out of work for so long that they can no longer collect unemployment insurance. These people have fallen off the charts. Instead of going through the charade of looking for jobs that do not exist in certain categories, the unemployed who no longer qualify as such are plugging into disability programs while they wait for Social Security to lock in. This means that, often through no fault of their own, they are letting the rest of us support them. Unemployment insurance, covered by deductions from workers’ paychecks, once had its longest average duration of 21 weeks as recently as 1983. The average duration is now 39 weeks. The maximum is now 99 weeks, and many people are quickly heading there. From late 2007, when the crunch started to make itself felt, the number of people receiving unemployment benefits multiplied four-fold, reaching 11.5 million. That figure ostensibly lifted a little, but the lift is mostly an illusion. About two million people collected unemployment until their benefits ran out, and then they stopped collecting. Those who could do it might then qualify for what used to be called Welfare. To quality for Welfare, unless the standards have charged, you have to cease being a property owner or driving a late-model car. Once you lose the house and sell the car, you won’t starve to death as long as you stay sober and off drugs, but you won’t enjoy your life very much at the County Shelter or in subsidized housing. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently noted that the longer people are out of work, the less chance they have of landing a new job. Whatever skills they have erode as the former workers stay away from the changing technology of the workplace, and gray hairs and health problems related to the aging process don’t play well at the personnel department. For the first time in American history (without reference to new immigrants or minorities coping with the aftermath of slavery), we are now gradually forming a classic European “proletariat” of healthy adults who own no property, have no trade skills, maintain no investments or savings, and have nothing to lose short of their lives if the whole system collapses. This is not good. In the short term, Congress will shortly have a chance to extend unemployment for what would be the tenth time. If the program as it now exists doesn’t get another extension, another 2.2 million former workers will fall out of the unemployment support system by February 2012. Finger-pointing is as retrograde as finger-painting. The crunch had multiple origins, ranging from the Most Favored Nation status granted to China and the easy real estate credit policies of the later George W. Bush years to the decision to attack Iraq for reasons that remain to be adequately explained. Waging an expensive war for no good purpose when you already have a crumbling industrial base The only option is up Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: We want to extend our sincerest thanks to all our supporters and to those who chose not to support us during the recent election cycle. As we canvassed the streets of our community during the last several months, we were blessed to meet so many caring citizens, and it reinforced for us just how special Midland Park is. Obviously, we are disappointed with the final result, especially given the closeness of the election totals. However, we are proud of the positive campaign that we managed, choosing to focus on the positive attributes of our plans and ourselves. We think that Midland Park’s citizens deserve this type of campaign. We have long been involved in our community, and the results of this election will not sway that one bit. As wonderful as our town is, there are still opportunities to enhance our community. We will not shy away from providing the leadership to keep our town moving forward, and you shouldn’t either. We need everyone who wants Midland Park’s future to be brighter to speak up! Let our elected officials know what’s on your minds. Thank you, again, for the opportunity to run in this last election. We feel fortunate to have traveled this journey with you. Russ Kamp Joe Monahan Midland Park Dear Editor: I was so impressed with the way the “Y” handled the storm last week that I wanted to share it! Candidates thank supporters Never has the mission of the Wyckoff Family YMCA, which is to reach out to area residents and provide services and help people, been more visible than on Monday, Oct. 31. So many of our area residents were victims of the harsh snowstorm, which left them in homes without electricity, heat, and even water in some cases. The Y opened its doors to all to come and stay warm. The gym was a jumble of children and parents playing games, enjoying a continental breakfast, and making it possible to even have a warm shower and celebrate Halloween. Most of all, events such as this emergency brings out the best in people and makes us love our Y and the important role it plays in our community. Kudos to all. Marie Moorehead Mahwah Y makes a good neighbor