Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • February 12, 2014 Phil the Groundhog missed the good news The groundhog saw his shadow. Sure enough, we got two more snowstorms back to back and all the kids cried because they had to miss more school. The groundhog, however, missed the good news. Despite the winter chill, President Obama advocated a $10.10 per hour minimum wage, while a Farm Bill was introduced that could cut Food Stamps. Partisans on both sides were predictably outraged. The right will now scream that nobody can do business if he pays his work- ers a living wage, and the left will tell us children will go hungry if the Food Stamp entitlement is reduced. Neither argument is without merit. I recently saw a short documentary about a manufac- turer of sports apparel who insisted on playing his work- ers in the Dominican Republic a living wage, calculated there at about $3 an hour, and having safe factories with adequate light. Each garment is marketed with a small photograph and short biography of the man or woman who made the garment and how fair wages and a safe factory changed the worker’s life and enabled him or her to feed the kids more than one meal a day and live in a nice little house. The documentary cut to the college kids who were stocking the sports garments on the racks or examining them for possible purchase. Most of the kids were honest enough to say their primary consideration in buying things is the price. It is great that the manufacturer is doing this for his workers, but of course, when it’s a personal matter like my own money... A Japanese company I once had some knowledge of paid its production line workers in Japan about $200 a week and the production line workers in the subsidiary plant in Thailand about $200 a month, which reflected a lower cost of living in Thailand than in Japan. The regional manager, a man with a dark Japanese sense of humor, attended a conference and was shown what the mainland Chinese paid their production line workers. He reported back to the U.S. headquarters staff. “It is time for hara-kiri!” The Japanese kept their Asian and American wages fair and within two years they had tanked as far as U.S. sales were concerned. Nobody in America wanted to hear about fair wages in Japan and marginally fair wages in Thailand. They wanted the cheapest item on the shelf. They got it. The Americans and the other Asians who worked at the office got a pink slip. They also paid lower incomes taxes, as in -- no more job, so the rest of us also got stuffed. The howling injustice of paying Americans less than they need for a modest lifestyle is echoed by a strange and no longer secret process. Workers who sign on for the big box discount clubs are given instructions on how to file for all kinds of supplemental income provided not by the employer, but by the government. Unable to face the prospect of hungry Americans who work full-time, the government devised a number of programs that supple- ment wages. The taxpayers, through no choice or their own, subsidize the employers’ right to underpay produc- tion workers. Multi-millionaires who get rich cheating the poor are not entitled to anybody’s respect. The history of England, Europe, and Russia after the arrival of industrial capitalism and the indifference of all too many employ- ers to their survival of their laborers offered some ugly pictures of how porcine greed led to violent revolutions. The stories of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York or the Copper Strike of 1913 in the Midwest turned up a large inventory of people killed by the action or inaction of fellow Americans. The incidents are not mentioned at ceremonies where politicians who were never there tell nodding, often smirking veterans that they saved us all to going on speaking English as opposed to Vietnamese. Conversely, the decision to circumscribe the Food Stamp program by one percent may raise hackles of out- rage and indignation. Look again. One of my spies was standing in a checkout line where a lot of people use Food Stamps and was surprised to see a young middle-aged white woman, nicely dressed, tendering Food Stamps for shrimp, red potatoes, parsley, and other gourmet food items that did not have a lot of bulk nutrient content. “I get these because I’m studying for my master’s degree and had to cut back on work,” the woman told my spy. “I might as well use them, right?” Wrong. Extended logic would suggest that the Food Stamp program was invented to feed people who had no jobs, not to subsidize gourmet home cooking for people who voluntarily withdrew from a full work week to take a second college degree. Collateral damage begins when the American taxpayers get fed up with feeding people who could easily work and earn a solid living but would rather cruise through a few more semesters of college and then stick it to some employer -- probably the federal or state government -- for higher wages. It is a near-cinch that they will be working for the discount stores where lifestyle subsidies will probably be permanent. We need to raise the minimum wage to the point where one employed person can cover food and lodging and two employed people can start a family. We also need to drop all subsidies paid by taxpayers so employers can continue to underpay their workers. Maybe we need to cut down on the expensive network of bureaucrats who help people swindle the government rather than get a job or go back to wherever when it does not work out for them here. We should continue a reasonable unemployment pro- gram for people, especially veterans and their families, and former steady workers who have lost their jobs and cannot find new ones and have exhausted their state ben- efits. Veterans who served, and people who worked until their jobs disappeared, deserve our consideration because they were once useful and worthwhile citizens, and soon may be so again. People who come here and cannot make it economically should not be harmed or humiliated. They should be urged to go back home because it is less expensive to feed them and provide basic medication in their own countries than it is here. The self-supporters should stay because they are on the way to becoming Americans. Those who are not U.S. veterans, however, should not take part in financial entitlement programs unless they have lived here for a minimum of 20 years without public assistance and have paid into the system. The first criminal conviction should also be the end of the trail for any foreign-born individual as far as possible citizenship or permanent residency goes. Home-grown people also commit outrageous and stupid crimes, but we have no place else to send them. Phil the Groundhog may not have been awake to see it, but if we drop party differences to promote a real living wage and to reduce unearned entitlements that drain the middle class, we may yet save America from a permanent winter. Wyckoff International affair The Wyckoff Family YMCA recently sponsored an ethnic food night. The children are learning all about their heritage and their nationalities. Each family brought in a special dish highlighting their heritage. The evening was topped off with a piñata filled with healthy snacks.