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Rising 300 feet from the canyon floor, Fajada Butte is a dominant landmark at the southeastern end of Chaco Canyon. Near the summit of the butte on a June day in 1977, Anna Sofaer, an artist, was recording one of two spiral petroglyphs located on a rock wall behind three upright slabs of rock. At midday, she noticed a dagger of light slicing through the spiral. This apparent “sun dagger” falls on the spiral during equinoxes and both solstices. It may also mark the major and minor standstills of the moon. There is a great deal of controversy among archaeologists as to the dating and placement of this “sun dagger” site. Also, because the site has become increasingly fragile over the years, tourists are no longer allowed to climb to the butte’s summit.

At the opposite end of Chaco Canyon, near the great house Penasco Blanco, is a breathtaking painting which many believe to represent the supernova of A.D.1054, which formed the Crab Nebula (M1).

Standing beneath this pictograph, one can envision an ancient astronomer gazing up toward a star blazing next to a crescent moon in the twilight of dawn. What would the ancient one have thought, standing in what may have been a sun-watching station, on seeing an average, familiar star grow bigger and brighter than ever before, almost right before his or her eyes? This stellar event could be seen in daylight for three weeks. Adding yet another twist to the mystery is what appears to be a blazing comet etched into the rock wall beneath the “supernova” painting. The same sky-watching community could easily have added this feature with the visit of Comet Halley in 1066.

Though remote, Chaco Canyon is worth every bump and jolt on the rugged 17-mile dirt road that must be traveled to get there. Ladies, wear your sports bras for this ride. According to Cornucopia, “If you can get here, you can be here,” is the motto of the National Park Service, caretaker of this exquisite monument lost in time.

In any event, Chaco Canyon is a compelling adventure that will have you creating your own ideas of what the Anasazi were up to. To see all there is to see, plan to spend two or three days here.

Camping is the best way to fully appreciate Chaco Canyon’s wonders, unless you relish a 70-mile drive into Cuba, New Mexico, the closest place with plentiful accomodations, each night after exploring the ruins and trails all day. Besides, if you leave the park, especially from May to September, you’ll miss great astronomy nights filled with telescopic tours of the universe. And under the jet-black skies of Chaco Canyon, the Milky Way stands out against the backdrop of stars like a ribbon of clouds dusted with sparkling glitter. What self-respecting observer would want to miss that? Bring a telescope or binoculars — you won’t regret it.

But if you’re like some people I know and have sworn resolutely never to camp again, the Chaco Inn at the Post — a bed and breakfast with three nice rooms and great food — is about 25 miles from the park in Nageezi. You’ll definitely want to call ahead and make reservations, (505) 6323646. Be sure to take your own food into the park because you won’t find any at the informative visitors center, and carry lots of water with you. However you manage it, Chaco Canyon will deliver. Immerse yourself in the mystery of a genuine lost world.

Superintendent, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, P.O. Box 220, Nageezi, NM 87037; phone, (505)786-7014; website, http://www.cr. nps.gov/chcu/index.htm.

Roswell, New Mexico: Is the Truth Really Out There?

“We were in the back of my pickup truck, buck-naked . . . having a good `ole time when about 11:30 the night of July 4, 1947, all hell broke loose.

“There was a big flash, an intense, bright explosion, with a noise like thunder, this thing came plowing through the trees, shearing off the tops, and then stopped between two huge rocks . . . the damn thing stopped about sixty yards from the pickup . . . we thought at first it was going to hit us!”

Okay. So this excerpt from The Jim Ragsdale Story: A Closer Look at the Roswell Incident is somewhat short of a documented, scientific report. Some of you are raising your eyebrows. What? An editor for Astronomy taking a joyride out to an alleged UFO crash site? Hey — it was on the way to the airport. And besides, the International UFO Museum and Research Center (IUFO MRC) at 400-406 N. Main Street in Roswell, New Mexico, has a great gift shop. The museum contains various displays including “Crop Circles: Phenomenon or Hoax?”, “Ancient Cultures and Their Connections to Extraterrestrial Life Forms,” and “The Mystery of Cattle Mutilations.” Give IUFOMRC a call, (505) 625-94-95, or check out their website, http://www.lookingglass.net/ commercial/ufo/index.html.

In December 1996, the Tourism Association of New Mexico awarded the IUFOMRC its “Top Tourist Destination of New Mexico” award. Whether or not an alien spacecraft crashed outside of Roswell, the town has many attractions, both within the area and nearby, including the Kodak Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta in October, Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Bottomless Lake State Park, and Carlsbad Caverns National Park. See Roswell’s website at http://roswell-usa.com/ for upcoming events.

My traveling companion and I toured the museum and spoke with the delightful museum director Deon Crosby, who showed us pictures and gave us a map to the site where Roswell local Jim Ragsdale allegedly witnessed an alien spacecraft crash into the side of a mountain in 1947. We donned our X-Files, FBI-agent, Mulder and Scully hats and took the bait. It was, after all, just a couple months short of the 50th anniversary of the alleged “Roswell Incident.”

Following directions, we drove 51 miles west of Roswell on Pine Lodge Road toward Capitan and Boy Scout Mountains. The drive was beautiful as Capitan loomed ever closer in the late afternoon sunshine. After another five and a half miles or so on rugged dirt roads, we arrived at our destination. The boulders in question were easy to find because Crosby had shown us pictures of them before we left the museum.

The UFO supposedly crashed into the side of a mountain before slamming into three large boulders, stopping just short of Ragsdale’s camping site. One of the boulders was supposedly split by the impact. I’m no geologist, but I did meticulously photograph the boulders in question. Was the boulder split by an impact, or could it have been a more natural event, such as water seepage? The site didn’t appear extraordinary-apart from the split boulder, it was a lovely forested hill. Here and there we saw a downed tree, but no more than one finds on any camping excursion.

Not wishing to be a stick-in-the-mud, when I returned home I turned my photographs over to geologist Herman Bender of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. His verdict? Though he stated that an on-site visit would be necessary for total confirmation, on studying the photos, he felt the crack in the boulder was a result of a natural process, probably seismic. The surface of the rock inside the crack, he thought, showed weathering and exfoliation in excess of the 50 years since the purported impact-more likely thousands of years.

Did an alien spaceship crash into a mountain hillside on a thunderous July night in 1947? Did the United States government confiscate that spacecraft and then undertake a monumental effort to cover up any leftover evidence? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. For my part, I say no. But darn it all, I wanted to believe.

RELATED ARTICLE: Roswell’s Real Flying Objects

Long before the famed alleged UFO crash of 1947, strange objects whizzed about in the skies over Roswell. There were 56 in all, each well-documented, each uncontested. Though the man behind these gizmos did most of his work in secrecy, it was hard to hide the blasts and contrails coming from the local desert. These were the rockets of Robert H. Goddard.

From 1930 to 1941, the Goddards and their crew of four lived at Mescalero Ranch, just outside Roswell. They constructed a launch tower and a crude control shed and went about making giant advances in the science of rocketry.

Goddard built the first liquid fuel rocket in 1925, filled it with Texaco gasoline and liquefied oxygen, and set it off from a cabbage patch in Auburn, Massachusetts. When a Boston Globe headline read “‘Moon Rocket’ Man’s Test Alarms Whole Countryside,” Goddard began to realize the need to relocate. Thanks to supporter Charles Lindbergh, he received a large enough grant from the Guggenheim Foundation to head to the open spaces of New Mexico.

While there, Goddard made major advances in rocket propulsion, stabilization, tracking, and recovery. Thanks to parachutes sewn together by Mrs. Goddard, instruments could be placed in the nose cones and retrieved after the flight.

When visiting Roswell, stop at the Museum and Art Center. Goddard’s launch tower sits on the front lawn, and a faithful recreation of his workshop waits inside. An extensive collection of rocket assemblies, patent applications, and documents spanning Goddard’s career compliment the fragments of his first flight, also on display.

Admission to the museum is free, though contributions are appreciated. Located at 100 West Eleventh Street “Eleventh and Main), the museum is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays and holidays, 1 to 5 p.m.

StarHill Inn

Mystical and magical, a stop at the world-renowned StarHill Inn is a vacation in itself. People have traveled from as far away as Singapore to experience the velvet black skies of the Southwest coupled with the warm hospitality of Phil and Blair Mahon, owners and operators of this star-gazing getaway. Nestled deep in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the northern part of New Mexico, StarHill Inn has provided an astronomical extravaganza for amateurs and professionals alike since 1988. But it charms more than just those who love the dark. Daylight is delightful, and the sun rises to the melodies of 300 or more bird species who call the area home.

With two national wildlife refuges (Las Vegas and Maxwell National Wildlife Refuges) and two state parks in the immediate vicinity, it’s easy to see why StarHill Inn provides birding workshops on its menu of activities. The inn also provides a map of birding spots in the area, and Blair is always willing and eager to share her birding adventures with others.

StarHill Inn is not only a birders’ paradise; hikers can trek for months without repeating a trail. And should you tire of StarHill’s 195 acres of ponderosa forests and mountain meadows, just drive to a trailhead in the Pecos Wilderness. More than 200,000 acres of woods, wildlife, and mountain peaks climbing to 13,000 feet are yours to explore. If the season’s right, areas to hunt, fish, and boat are just minutes away.

New Mexico’s abundant opportunities for exploring ancient Native American pueblos and cliff dwellings are nearby as well — Bandelier, Puye, Pecos, and Tsankawi are all between 45 minutes and two hours away.

And, of course, the lure of Santa Fe is hard to ignore. About an hour’s drive southwest, its history, downhill and cross-country skiing, musical festivals, pueblos, and numerous art galleries and shopping opportunities make it a must on any New Mexico adventure list.

But if you’re one of those single-minded, die-hard, detect-faint-celestial-targets-’til-you-drop types, you will not be disappointed. With only a small light-dome visible to the southwest (Las Vegas — no, not the gambling mecca of Nevada, but New Mexico’s own), the limiting magnitude at StarHill Inn is 6.5. Powered piers for seven telescopes command the observing deck, which is adjacent to the library/warming house and observatory dome.

Bring your own observing equipment or rent one or more of the many on-site telescopes, binoculars, and accouterments. From 7×42 binoculars to a 24-inch f/8 Ritchey-Chretien scope with an ST-8 CCD camera, the selection should satisfy star-gazers at all levels of expertise. You can also opt for a private observing session and sky tour with Phil using your choice of nine telescopes. The sky’s the limit for relaxed or serious observing, astrophotography, and even armchair astronomy. If the night clouds over, the library holds a television, videocassette recorder, videos, books, and a computer loaded with TheSky (Software Bisque), Earth-Centered Universe (Nova Astronomics), and Distant Suns (Virtual Reality) software.

Don’t feel like observing? Simply relax in one of StarHill Inn’s seven extraordinary cottages for the evening. Impeccably decorated and immaculate, the Mahon’s love of this celestial retreat shines in each and every detail. All units boast a fully equipped kitchen stocked with staples (including a toaster-oven, coffeemaker, and coffee), a beautiful and distinct fireplace for those cooler nights, a private porch, and a lovely bath. When it’s time for bed, snuggle up under the colorful, fluffy comforters, turn off the lights, and gaze at the delicate array of stars painted on your ceiling.

Whether you take your family, a friend, or travel alone, there is something for everyone at StarHill Inn. Be sure to call for a schedule of upcoming workshops, including those on visual astronomy, ancient astronomy, and astrophotography. This retreat could easily justify an entire holiday, but it can also complement your vacation if you’re just “passing through.” Whatever you do though, don’t pass it by.

IN his weekly radio address in mid April President Clinton lamented that his anti-terrorism bill had been watered down and argued that “we need the real thing.” When the bill was in conference, Democrats worked to add provisions to give it “some teeth.” Rep. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), a liberal’s liberal, complained that “there’s a lot that should be in this bill that’s not.” Clinton FBI Director Louis Freeh, meanwhile, argued that a federal law-enforcement review commission provided for in the bill would have “a chilling effect on those charged with vigorously enforcing the law.” What all these newly tough-on-crime Democrats were complaining about were provisions either deleted from the bill or added to it at the behest of Republicans like freshman Rep. Bob Barr (Ga.).

Barr helped torpedo the initial Clinton version of the bill last year, then in March stripped down further a compromise version he had worked out with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde. “The traditional forces of big government say, ‘There’s a problem, let government fix it,”‘ explains Barr. “And if it’s law enforcement, traditionally Republicans said, ‘Give law enforcement whatever it wants.’ The process whereby this bill became law is recognition that there really are new forces at work in the Congress on behalf of the people.” New, indeed. As Clinton touts his cops-on-the-street plan and talks tough on assault weapons, Republicans are in danger of losing their grip on the crime issue for the first time since 1968.

The Dole campaign is getting most of the blame for the GOP’s current funk. But the Republican predicament has been a party-wide effort with roots far deeper than a stumbling presidential candidate. The GOP Congress has operated with a reckless disregard for its own political health. In cases like the anti-terrorism bill, it has succumbed to the misplaced enthusiasms of its well-intentioned and energetic freshman class. In others, like the balanced-budget fight, it has been seduced by its own airy triumphalism. And in still others, like affirmative action, it has been wary of offending polite opinion. “The Bush Administration in drag,” is how one House member describes a GOP Congress so weakened it now cowers before the minimum wage.

Like the Bush Administration, the GOP Congress has allowed critical distinctions between itself and Bill Clinton to get blurred. Crime is one example. Another is taxes. Both Republicans and Democrats now endorse what Clinton calls “a modest tax cut.” And, astoundingly, Clinton may have more credibility than the Republicans. “I can’t tell you,” says GOP pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, “how many focus groups, when I ask, What do Republicans stand for? say, Higher taxes.” A dramatic tax-cut proposal from the GOP, a la Christine Todd Whitman in 1993, would be just the thing to clear the fog — but Republicans don’t dare. Which is just one of many unhappy results of the GOP’s year-long dance with the deficit.

It is impossible to overestimate the damage done by the GOP’s fixation on the balanced budget, which came at the instigation not of Dole, but of House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The fight left Clinton looking both principled and reasonable, while shattering the GOP’s credibility, a political dynamic that has been at work ever since. Dole Chief of Staff Sheila Burke recently tried to cheer up ameeting of long-faced Republican staffers by noting that Republicans have had a pretty good couple of weeks. In one sense they had: meaningful habeas-corpus reforms signed into law; that decade-old will-o’-the-wisp, the line-item veto, finally a reality; a new farm bill that is flawed but that nonetheless represents progress. The trouble is that none of this matters. The President is riding so high he can flip almost anything to his advantage.

TAKE welfare, a premier GOP issue. Republicans have two Clinton vetoes under their belt. But both date from the budget fight when no one was paying attention, and Clinton is touting all the reform waivers his Administration has granted states. Should Republicans send Clinton more veto bait? Maybe — except any bill would inevitably get caught up in GOP in-fighting, and by the time Senate moderates are through with it could actually produce a presidential signature rather than a veto. What to do? “Here’s what we lay out for ourselves,” complains one Senate aide. “If we pass it and he signs it — we lose. If we pass it and he vetoes it — we didn’t get anything done. And if we don’t pass it, he can’t veto it — but we’re do-nothing. So, therefore, we lay out a scenario where whatever we do and whatever he does — we lose.”

It was in this lose-lose atmosphere that Republicans — convinced they can’t beat Clinton on anything — got rolled on the minimum wage. A foul-up on the part of Dole’s floor manager made it possible for the Democrats to offer the amendment, and when eight Republicans voted to consider it Dole was trapped. It has become clear that while Senate Democrats are ready to play politics to the hilt — 47 filibusters as of March, more than in either of the past two Congresses — Dole’s colleagues aren’t prepared to do the same. Not only did a bloc defect on the minimum wage, five of them abandoned Dole on a crucial vote on Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs), including Slade Gorton (Wash.), whose vote seemed a product of personal pique. Meanwhile, not one Democrat voted for MSAs, even those who had previously endorsed the idea.

This is nothing new from Senate Republicans. The difference between this year and the beginning of last year is that the House — at least initially — wasn’t there to provide a fire wall. Gingrich, still limping from the budget debacle, quickly bowed to the inevitability of the minimum wage. Citing the fact that only thirty-some House Republicans voted against it the last time it came up, in 1989, he thought he was reading the tea-leaves of his conference, which has been softened by a relentless barrage of union attack ads. (Labor and environmental groups have spent almost as much against Washington freshman Randy Tate as he spent getting elected in 1994.) It took House Majority Leader Dick Armey to pull Gingrich back, getting his endorsement of an alternative package of tax cuts and union reforms.

An effective counter-thrust to the minimum wage, the package may finally get Republicans talking again about economic growth. And at least it’s playing offense, which Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour realizes is half the answer (see “Bread & Circuses,” p. 26). But unless Bob Dole gets out of Washington he will never shake free of the sort of Democratic tactics that have been tripping him up. And, at a deeper level, unless the Republican Party regains confidence in its own ideas it won’t be able to defend itself against proposals even as discredited as the minimum wage. “I think it’s the minority mentality,” says Rep. Jim Talent (R., Mo.). “I think it’s a creeping sense people have that the last election was really some fluke and the Left has some divine right to govern and will no matter what we do or say.”

A CRUCIAL sign of the coming of a GOP tide in 1994 was Republicans’ willingness to stand up to bogus proposals like the Clinton crime bill, because they knew they could take their case to the public. That sense is now lost — just when the GOP needs it most. “The irony is that there’s more work to do now than when we started out a year and a half ago,” says Kellyanne Fitzpatrick. If the party applied half the energy it took to push Medicare uphill last year to truly popular issues like English-only legislation or a rollback of affirmative action, life might be easier. So far, though, there’s no relief in sight. The Senate recently passed the Kennedy – Kassebaum health bill 100 to 0. With its “guaranteed issue” requirements the bill promises to disrupt the private insurance market, creating an opening for yet more government intervention. which even for this chastened GOP Congress is a departure: reviving not just the Clinton Administration, but its approach to health-care reform too.

FOR the first time this year congressional Republicans feel as if they have their political footing. They have passed a major welfare-reform bill, “common-sense” health-care legislation, and a widely popular minimum-wage measure. President Clinton’s charge of GOP “extremism” has been implicitly revoked by all his signatures, while the appellation “do-nothing Congress” plainly no longer applies. Republican members left Washington, D.C., for the recess light of heart, convinced they had finally hit upon the formula that will see them through November. But if the last two weeks re-elect them, they will have learned the wrong lessons from their two years in power.

The welfare-reform bill — despite conservative cheers and liberal wails — hardly represents the death of liberalism. Ending the AFDC entitlement is indeed an enormous symbolic victory, but when it comes to actual policy the bill has five, more modest advantages: 1) It slows the rate of growth of welfare spending to about 4 per cent a year. 2) Scrapping the entitlement ends the perverse incentive for states to get more people onto the rolls in order to get more federal dollars. 3) The bill’s work requirements are structurally sound, designed to reduce the caseload rather than create huge jobs programs. 4) It takes tiny steps against illegitimacy (states are rewarded for reducing illegitimate births). 5) It cuts into the benefits of non-citizens, diminishing the United States’ allure as the world’s welfare magnet. All of this is marked progress in the welfare debate, especially given the fact that three years ago Republicans couldn’t even convince Democrats to kick alcoholics and drug addicts off Supplemental Security Income. (Congress did so in separate legislation earlier this year.)

But the bill’s shortcomings are obvious. The work requirements really apply to only 18 per cent of the caseload by the end of the century (the bill says 35 per cent, but that number is the product of fast statistical footwork — and anyway, about 8 per cent of the welfare population is already working). The GOP governors, led by Michigan’s John Engler, lobbied to have the requirements as flimsy as possible so that they could easily meet them. The ballyhooed five-year cut-off of benefits, meanwhile, is easily evaded. States can allocate their own dollars to recipients on the rolls for more than five years, while shifting more federal dollars to newer recipients. And the bill provides plenty of opportunities for Donna Shalala’s Health and Human Services to misinterpret its provisions, and for the Legal Services Corporation to work its magic.

On all other fronts, moreover, the GOP has been in open retreat. Republicans not only capitulated on the minimum wage, they did so without even protecting small business — a keystone of the economy, not to mention the GOP coalition — from its effects. The bill passed 281 to 44 (93 Republicans voting aye) in the House and 74 to 24 (27 Republicans voting aye) in the Senate. Can liberalism really be in the grave when so many Republicans are buffaloed into supporting a minimum-wage hike? The GOP also reversed itself on an issue central to its victory in 1994: now, apparently, the party believes government can intervene in the health-care market to guarantee people’s coverage. The central provision of the Kassebaum – Kennedy bill (adopted in the House 421 to 2, in the Senate 98 to 0) mandates that an individual leaving his job cannot be turned down for coverage in the individual insurance market, even if he is sick. The effect will be to force the market to cover people who tend to have higher health-care costs, raising premiums for everyone else and pushing younger, healthier people out of the market. This — together with provisions requiring insurers to renew most policies and prohibiting insurers from turning away individuals with pre-existing conditions — will create pressure for more regulation later. (Market-oriented Medical Savings Accounts were limited to a small demonstration project in the bill.) Sen. Kennedy has promised to be back for another bite of the apple.

Will Republicans be ready for him? They still suffer from their balanced-budget debacle this year. They concluded then that they couldn’t win any argument with President Clinton. In fact, they just couldn’t win a fight over Medicare. But they avoided passing popular bills on issues like affirmative action and taxes for fear of provoking attacks on them as extremists, friends of the rich, etc. They floundered for months, before settling on their latest strategy, which is to seek the President’s seal of approval. Instead of confronting him on wedge issues, they have accommodated him on consensus ones. Instead of defining him as a liberal, they join him in the center. It may work in November, but only at the risk of sabotaging presidential candidate Bob Dole.

Which presents two larger, strategic problems. The first is that if Dole loses big, he may take down enough bi-partisan, consensus-building Republican congressmen to scuttle the Republican majority anyway. The other is that Dole is now the symbolic repository of tax cuts, the foremost GOP issue. If Dole loses, tax cuts go down with him, while President Clinton will no doubt claim a mandate for his one-step-back, two-steps-forward liberalism. And what is to keep a rudderless, barely re-elected GOP Congress from cooperating with him on that too?

With labor among the industry’s highest expenses, following inventory, it is strenuously objecting to any further increase, yet its usual arguments that higher payrolls will cost jobs and close stores have lost some weight in the current economic boom.

Retailers are riding the high tide of the current economy. According to Labor Department figures, department stores’ employment in May was 100,000 jobs above a year ago, and the overall unemployment rate is at a 28-year low of 4.3 percent. The situation has employers scrambling for workers and has forced many to enhance benefits packages and pay entry-level workers more than the current $5.15 minimum.

Now they are confronted with a plan, put forth by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) — who marched the last minimum wage boost through Congress two years ago in spite of dire protestations from business — to raise the bottom hourly wage to $6.15 in two 50-cent intervals by 2000.

Kennedy is banking on election-year momentum to propel his idea through the House and Senate and to the White House, where President Clinton is eager to sign it into law. Aides to Kennedy say he may attach the minimum wage increase to the bankruptcy reform measure now moving through Congress.

“It’s like retailers are arguing with a full pocketbook,” said Irwin Cohen, managing director of consumer business practice at Deloitte & Touche.

“But we can’t assume the economy will stay like this forever. I’m not going to predict when the economy will turn, but at some point we’ll have a downturn and another increase will have an impact.”

The biggest argument that Morrison Cain, vice president for legal and public affairs with the International Mass Retail Association, makes against the proposal is that the wage floor was last raised less than one year ago, in September 1997.

“We just did it,” Cain said. “It’s too soon. We should give it a rest and let employers digest the last increase.”

A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, on the last wage increase, which benefited about 10 million low-wage workers, showed there was no negative employment impact. A study of employment trends since the first boost on Oct. 1, 1996, and the second on Sept. 1, 1997, fails “to find any systematic, significant job loss associated with the increases,” the report said. “Not only are the estimated employment effects generally economically small and statistically insignificant, they are also almost as likely to be positive as negative.”

Jared Bernstein, a labor market economist at EPI and co-author of the report, acknowledged that employer costs will rise with the proposed hike, but he noted, for the past 20 years, the wage floor fell in real terms: “If employers are complaining about a price increase now, they benefited from a decrease in labor costs over the long, lean years for minimum wage workers. Even with this proposed increase, the minimum wage is still 18 percent below where it was in 1979 in real terms. Employers are still well ahead of the game.”

Rebel Cole, chief economist at the Employment Policies Institute, another Washington think tank with a more conservative bent, is critical of the proposed hike. Despite recent job increases, they could have been even heftier if the last hike had not been made, he said.

“This is a smoke screen that proponents of a hike use,” he said. “They say that employment is up, but how much would it have gone up without the wage increase?”

Emanuel Weintraub, president and chief executive officer of consulting firm Emanuel Weintraub and Associates, in Fort Lee, N.J., predicts nothing but gloom for retailers if the wage is increased.

“Profits in retailing aren’t terribly high,” he said. “There is huge competition. If the wage is increased, the more efficient companies can pay it, but for the less efficient ones, it will erode their margins. When you pay the increase, it must come out of profit, increased efficiencies or a reduction in the head count. For most firms, they will try to inch up prices where they can.”

Weintraub estimated that employers’ personnel costs will rise at least 22 percent if the wage floor is raised, in part because of wage-based expenses such as state and local payroll taxes, Social Security, workers compensation and the Federal Insurance Contributions Act.

Also, fringe benefits such as vacation time and health benefits will rise incrementally as wages rise, he said. Weintraub also predicts a ripple effect that will force wages above the minimum wage up even more.

“Human resources will have to maintain equity,” he said. “People will moan and complain.” If a store is not unionized, Weintraub estimated, it could take up to a year for the wage increase to ripple through the ranks. Unionized stores would see it immediately, he said.

Many retailers pay above the federally mandated minimum wage. According to the National Retail Federation, the average hourly earnings for department store nonsupervisory workers in 1996, the most recently available, were $7.92.

Nonsupervisory workers in apparel and accessory stores earned on average $7.73 an hour, NRF said.

Wal-Mart, with 720,000 workers in the U.S. and 115,000 internationally the largest employer in the world, does not pay the minimum wage anywhere, a spokeswoman said. Even part-timers start at salaries above the wage floor, she said. The lowest hourly wage paid by Wal-Mart is 25 cents above the minimum federal requirements, and so an increase would force up beginning wages, she said.

Wal-Mart unlikely would pare employment or raise costs to absorb the costs, she said. Instead, the retail giant would attempt better management of scheduling and better productivity, she said.

At Sears, Roebuck & Co., where the benefits package has increasingly been enhanced to compete for workers in the tight employment market, a wage increase could mean fewer benefits, a spokeswoman said.

Recent additions to the package include tuition reimbursement and goal sharing that provides bonuses to every Sears employee and not just management.

She also noted that entry-level full- and part-time workers at Sears also are paid above the minimum wage.

“It would be difficult to quantify the impact,” she said. “We’d have to look at the entire compensation package.”

Steve Pfister, executive vice president for government affairs for the National Retail Federation, said it’s the ripple effect that will most hurt retailers operating on the margin of profitability.

“We have to protect those people,” he said, noting that they are primarily in the South, Southeast and upper Midwest.

Bernstein at EPI acknowledged that there is a ripple effect and notes it will affect those making from 75 cents to $1 above the current minimum.

“That’s a lot of people,” he said. “But a higher wage will lower inefficiencies such as a high turnover rate, since workers are less likely to move to a job that pays a few cents more. Turnover is a big problem for low-wage employers like retailers.”

The lower turnover also will cut training costs, Bernstein predicted.

“I don’t doubt that there are smaller firms and those closer to the edge that will go under. But companies like that are born and die all the time. Whether a higher minimum wage will make that happen more quickly, I doubt it.”

Cain at IMRA scoffed at this reasoning. “Obviously a stable, productive workforce is something employers value, but it doesn’t mean there is no cap on what they can productively pay,” he said.

Yet Weintraub sees a silver lining to the proposed hike. “Competitively, retailers are all in the same boat,” he said. “Wal-Mart and Kmart have the same set of problems. The competitive impact will be universal.”

Over the past thirty years, America’s rich and well-educated have gotten richer, and the poor poorer. Since 1990 the wealthiest 5 percent has increased its income by 16 percent, while the income of the bottom 20 percent has fallen by 5 percent. During the first two years of the Clinton administration, according to the Census Bureau, the top 5 percent increased its income at a faster rate than during the eight years of the Reagan administration. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans now control one-third of the national wealth, i.e. about the same as that of the lowest 90 percent. The top 10 percent control two-thirds. Such income inequality, combined with America’s traditional paucity of social benefits (now being reduced), is not a prescription for social stability.

Immigration. Of course this is a nation of immigrants. We can, and should, keep our doors open to the oppressed of other lands. But there is a difference between being a haven for those fleeing tyranny and being a hospitality center for the impoverished billions of the world. This distinction touches some delicate nerve endings, but it has to be made. When Congress changed the immigration laws in 1965 to emphasize family reunification above skills and training, a flood of legal immigrants followed. The share of total U.S. population growth accounted for by immigrants rose from 11 percent in the decade ending in 1970 to 39 percent two decades later.

This huge mass of unskilled workers drives down the price of labor. It is cheap to hire a janitor, gardener or maid–so cheap that unskilled Americans are often unwilling to work at such wages. Were the going rate for orderlies and street sweepers $12 an hour rather than $4, unskilled Americans would likely fill those jobs, as natives do in Europe. Employers would pay more, reducing profits, but the benefits to society–in terms of lower crime, less drug use and less alienation–would be great.

While the large-scale admission of unskilled immigrants is sold as humanitarianism, its primary effect is to create a cheap labor pool and render unskilled Americans unemployable. The high social cost is hidden behind a smoke screen of sentimentality. It is not mere coincidence that the unemployment crisis of the inner cities has intensified with the massive increase of unskilled immigrants. When the social costs are counted in, cheap immigrant labor is not cheap, and it is not fair.

Globalization. To listen to politicians, we are entering an exciting new period of innovation and abundance, in which the whole world is a stage, a marketplace and a workshop. Clinton promised last week that with the Internet we can “shape the forces of the information age and the global society to unleash the limitless potential of all our people.” To drive home their point, the Democrats covered the Mall with tents full of talking computers. But they left some harder truths out. Globalization does not mean the end of scarcity, exploitation or the struggle for wealth. Nor does it mean the U.S. is going to become richer, although some corporations and individuals will. It means that capital can roam freely across the world in search of the most profitable place to invest. Capital seeks to maximize profits. This can be done in one of three ways: by controlling prices (monopolies and cartels), controlling sources of supply (imperialism) or controlling the cost of production, particularly wages. Cartels are unstable, and imperialism is usually not worth its cost. But wages can be controlled by increasing the supply of labor. Enter the global workshop.

There are about 250 million workers in the U.S. and western Europe earning an average of $85 a day, and about 90 million in the more developed countries of East Asia (excluding China) producing goods of equal quality for a few dollars a day. Under such circumstances, European and American corporations either flock east or use the threat of doing so to thwart demands for higher wages and benefits at home. And what will happen when Latin America, India, China and the rest of Asia pour another 1.2 billion workers into the global labor market? This represents, as Paul Kennedy has stated in the fall issue of New Perspectives Quarterly, “a colossal depressive force upon the real wages in the richer countries” with the likelihood that wages there “may tumble in some economic sectors by as much as 50 percent over the next two or three decades.” The same point is developed in rich detail by William Greider in his new book, One World, Ready or Not.

To respond, as many economists do, that in the long run Third World standards will rise and make happy new consumers for U.S. products is not only wishful thinking, it ignores the likely political upheavals over the next decades as angry voters are drawn to nationalist and fundamentalist alternatives in response to the chaos of eroding markets and wages. Taken alone, great income inequality, mass immigration and uncontrolled globalization would be difficult even for an activist and unified government to manage. Together they make it unlikely that Bill Clinton, or anyone in his mold, can build a bridge, as he proclaims, “wide enough and strong enough for every American to cross over to a blessed land of promise.”