Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • June 22, 2011 third-generation U.S. veteran, and I’m still waiting for my special Bergen County Veterans Medal to double my miniscule collection. I love this country. If I could afford it, I would gratefully buy American-made shirts and trousers at $100 per garment. Until I get really rich, I expect I’ll just keep on buying the $18 alternatives from elsewhere that I sometimes find in king size catalogs. Then I wait for the zippers to break. They never keep me waiting for long. The funny thing about manufacturing is that it tends to reflect labor costs and foods costs. People who eat meat can’t live on the same pay as people who eat noodles and rice. The economic hardship I sustain by my enormous height – I can’t shop the sales at standard stores -- and by my aversion to polyester have probably prolonged my working life by half a decade or more. If it were not for the fact that certain groups insist on 100 percent natural fibers, I would have long since scratched myself to death. I regard them not only with tolerance, but with a certain sense of gratitude. Category five: computer technicians. Who ever thought that computer technicians would be in over-supply? I would suspect that so many people wanted to do this that they surpassed the market several times over. I would also suspect that doing this over the telephone has opened up whole new vistas of employment to people who live in India or the Philippines, the last two places I spoke to over the phone when I tried to correct my computer problems. When the thing tanks on me now, I call my son. He, at least, is American-made and pays taxes in the same country I do. The message here is that if you are a smart kid or a loving parent you should not rely on any of these job markets for a future of steady employment. Thousands of seamstresses who once thrived were put out of business by the sewing machine, and it’s been all downhill since then in terms of full-time jobs. I think all girls should learn something about sewing, especially if they are lucky enough to learn with Virginia Fawcett of the Needlecraft School, who teaches manners and deportment along with sewing. The ability to style and repair your own clothes may be a more respected job skill in the future economic situation than any of us can (or want to) imagine. My wife wrote an award-winning story because the kids asked her where she learned all that stuff, and she started to explain what it was like to make your own clothes and knit your own socks and sweaters. One of her sweaters led to my son’s debut in acting. I took him with me to view the debut of “Dinomation” at the Morris County Museum. This was a display of moving dinosaurs, mostly about half-size but still pretty enormous. My son wore a reindeer sweater his mother had knitted. He was the youngest spectator there by about 20 years, but he dug it. Noticing the well-dressed kid, a local camera crew approached him and did an interview. “…and here’s the youngest spectator. What did you think of Dinomation?” “Scary!” “Who do you think would want to see it?” “Everybody!” I wish we had asked about a commercial fee. His comments made a number of news shows. He and his sister later posed for about 50 photographs at a Civil War Reenactment Day at Waterloo Village in costumes my daughter Emily had made. That was also memorable. However, constructive fun is not the same thing as job training. I wouldn’t recommend that they go into custom tailoring or acting either. We need to take a calm look at what has happened. The United States has lost a large part of its manufacturing base to less expensive labor elsewhere. The government cannot solve this problem by subsidizing education for people with the taxpayers’ money when the people are being trained for jobs that nobody needs done anymore. What’s wrong with this picture? People demand a subsidized education beyond high school and then demand that the government create jobs so that subsidized education doesn’t go to waste. Just one thing is wrong. The government seems to be going broke every couple of months, and government jobs don’t generate income; they absorb income. We need to restrict taxpayer subsidies to those jobs that really are necessary – medical arts, engineering, environmental sciences, and high-level construction – and stop funding education that doesn’t lead to employment. We need people to do the work the nation needs. The history of post-industrial societies before ours has shown that the most dangerous portion of the population is not the workers or the peasants, but the unemployed intellectuals who can’t find worthwhile jobs and get stuck doing nothing and hating themselves for it. Revolutions are generally fomented by people who have some intelligence, no work, and no likelihood of finding work. Perhaps more to the point, taxpayers should remember how to save money for themselves instead of expecting the government to provide for their every need through a system that leaks all the way to the reservoir by providing jobs for college students who really don’t have any job skills. We need to start becoming America again instead of trying to turn ourselves into a copy of decadent European societies without the culture or tradition to make us interesting to foreign tourists. I recently saw a reference to the jobs that will be less in demand in the future than they have been in the past. We need to examine this list and others like it so we don’t end up subsidizing continued education for personal failure at the public’s expense. Category one: financial consultants. That had to happen sooner or later. When you go to a typical financial consultant, the first thing he or she usually does is show you a graph with the stock market going up and up and tell you how much better you will do in the stock market than you will in CDs or savings accounts. Then he or she will try to sell you a stock. Want to go there? The next thing he or she will do is try to convince you to buy an insurance policy that you just have to have. Guess who gets the commission. The sane things to do – pay off your mortgage if you still have one and put the rest of the money where it is government insured – almost never crop up. The reason is that there is no money to be made for the financial consultant by putting money in the bank instead of in insurance policies or stocks. Category two: business executives. Business is the single most popular major in American colleges today, and kids learn in high school how important it is to be popular. The upshot of this is that colleges educate several times more business executives than the nation will ever need, so they wind up tripping over one another for jobs. The real way to get a job in the business world is to have a concentration in either mathematics or a modern foreign language, but probably not Spanish or Korean since too many native speakers are readily available. Recent graduates who speak Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, or Russian seem to have multiple job offers waiting for them. The trouble is that most schools don’t offer those languages, and are heavily committed to Spanish because they have teachers on hand who can teach Spanish. There’s nothing wrong with Spanish. Graduates are much better off if they’re fluent in Spanish than if they aren’t, but language choices should follow the job market – and the Asian languages are far more likely to lead to employment in executive jobs. Category three: business support. That means secretaries, stenographers, and receptionists. The pressure is such that most people who can’t type their own letters into the computer and print them out and paste stamps on them are not wanted in employment situations because it’s a waste of money to hire an executive and then hire a secretary to do the work for the executive and a stenographer to do the work for the secretary. Most kids today learn how to type before they learn how to write in script. The computer is very forgiving of mistakes if you don’t put your fist through the screen, and “business support” has been devastated by the need to cut costs even if it means more work for the people who actually get the jobs. Category four: garment makers. This is not a big employment factor in Northwest Bergen County, but guess where their jobs all went. Some day when my ship comes in – and it had better be an aircraft carrier or a non-leaking supertanker – I’m going to buy American-made clothes. I’m a Whose job is safe? Maybe no one’s. Educators conclude careers (continued from page 5) worked. I’ll miss the quality students and staff members, and will miss seeing everyone on a daily basis,” he adds, noting that he will likely still assist the driver’s education program on a part-time basis. “Don is an energetic, dedicated and caring educator. He has impacted thousands of students whether in his physical education classes, during intramurals, or on the roads of Bergen County as he taught them basic driving skills,” said B.C. Principal Tim McElhinney. “Don has a quiet confidence, which pervades everything he does. He is genuinely one of the most liked and respected teachers at Bergen Catholic, and will be sorely missed.” Fuchs joined the Bergen Catholic in the fall of 1970 as a mathematics teacher and track coach. He quickly established himself as a no-nonsense instructor who expected excellence from his students. His demanding-yet-fair style earned him the respect and admiration of the thousands of students he has taught. During his tenure, Fuchs taught every math course B.C. has offered, from Algebra I through AP Calculus. He also served four different terms as the chairman of the math department. He is credited with improving and upgrading the mathematics curriculum, and was instrumental in establishing the honors program and introducing Advanced Placement math courses. He also had a hand in the introduction and implementation of the Laptop Program. As a member of the Technology Committee, he played a key role in making this concept a reality at B.C. An outstanding student-athlete during his scholastic days at Essex Catholic High School in Newark, where he was a National Merit Scholar and took home a sixth-place medal in the national shot put championships, Fuchs also made major contributions to B.C.’s track program. From 1970 to 1997, he coached various Crusaders’ track teams (cross country, indoor, and outdoor) for a grand total of 75 seasons (57 as a head coach). Fuchs earned “Coach of the Year” honors twice. Fuchs served as the B.C. athletic director from 1983-87, and helped guide Bergen Catholic’s entrance into the N.N.J.I.L. A graduate of Seton Hall University, he is a member of three Halls of Fame: New Jersey Interscholastic Coaches Association, Essex Catholic, and Bergen Catholic. He was cited as an “Outstanding Educator” by Cornell University. “I got to work with the best people on Earth, and have always been surrounded by remarkable people,” Fuchs said. They make you look good!” “During the past forty-one years, Tom has been a master teacher positively impacting thousands of students who were lucky enough to sit in his classrooms,” Principal McElhinney added. “Tom possesses the wonderful ability to bring to life the most abstract elements of Math so his students can easily understand and effectively utilize the information. Tom is incredibly bright, enthusiastic, and caring. He will be deeply missed at Bergen Catholic.”