Hurt and Angry

We at the Herald interact with quite a number of businesses around our county, and if we had to put in words the mood of many of the business owners, it would be, hurt and angry. Ordinarily when the nation goes into a recession, a year or two later, we are back on our feet. Not this time; this is the recession that won’t go away.
One of our older staff members told me the other day, with tears in her eyes, “There are people in my family who have been out of work for over two years, people who’ve always worked hard, people who want to work. I have never seen it like this.”
America has been on top of the world when much of the rest of the world wasn’t, and as such, immigrants have been flocking to our shores for over two centuries. Those people who could not make it elsewhere thrived here, and made us into the nation others dreamed about.
What happened to the dream? We started importing the ways other nations, and in the process started making us look like them. Case in point: Take the over-four-year battle Franks Theatres has endured in order to demolish a 1950s-era structure in Cape May. They are in the theater business; if anybody ought to know what theater-goers want, one would look to someone in that business. The theatersof 60 years ago are not like the ones of today. They were built for masses of people crowded into seats that would make any budget airline proud.
That is not what people want today. They want to watch what they want to watch, which means you have to offer a large selection of movies, and the seats have to be comfortable. When my family moved to Cape May County in the early ’70s, Hunt’s had theaters everywhere. Not any more;times changed and most, if not all of those buildings have been demolished.
So Franks decided to throw in the towel and demolish their theater. But a handful of people had another idea, and decided to try to stop them. So now several years later, Franks is allowed to get on with their business. But at what cost to Franks?
Instead of focusing on running their business, they were sidetracked, at the cost of a lot of their time, energy and money. Had they been allowed to focus on their business, they would have created jobs by hiring people. They would have paid taxes to our state and nation on their earnings, helping to finance our governments. Their employees would have had money to spend in our stores, clubs and restaurants, and those businesses would have been doing better. And round and round it goes.
Now you multiply this one story by millions and you see why America is not working. Rule upon rule; regulation upon regulation, and slowly things grind to a halt. Businesses lay off people. The businesses and their former employees stop paying taxes. Governments run out of money, and lay off people. And the spiral continues ever downward. And formerly happy people become hurt and angry.
Art Hall, publisher