“What are you paying?” asks the applicant.

“I’ll pay you whatever you’re worth.”

“Nothing doing! Nobody can live on that.”

Where is that guy today, now that we’re infected with a plague of executives with just the opposite point of view: who turn out to be worth less than nothing in terms of results, but who nevertheless depart their positions with literally tens of millions of dollars in compensation – the golden parachute. According to an article in AlterNet, Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide (Remember the seductive television commercials? – “No money down, no fees, no points...”), has kept his job for the rest of the year and will net over $500,000,000 in various forms of rewards when he finally leaves. Merrill Lynch’s Stan O’Neal received a severance package of $161.5 million. There are many others like them, associated with companies “too big to fail” and thus in line for government relief. Meanwhile, over half a million Americans lost their jobs in November, and unemployment has risen to its highest level in almost 35 years. A little class warfare, anyone?

As I write this, the top executives of the United States’ three major vehicle manufacturers and the president of the United Auto Workers are pressing their cases for pieces of the government pie. Unlike the creators and bundlers of sub-prime mortgages, they can argue legitimately that their allegedly imminent failures will create catastrophic effects throughout the economy; in fact, as consumer confidence drops along with consumer income, their troubles have begun to do just that already. But their maiden voyage to Washington to present their cases argued powerfully that they have ears of tin to go with the heads of bone that for so many years ignored every warning signal along the tracks. Arriving separately in corporate jets, and equipped with very few specifics and figures (Can you imagine showing up for a loan at your own bank like that?), they ran smack into legislators of both parties who’d been hearing from their constituents, by the thousands, the message, No way! They returned to headquarters to pull together some numbers, polished up a trio of fuel-efficient automobiles, and conspicuously returned in them to the fray.

There will no doubt be some sort of temporary resolution of this situation very shortly. The American automotive industry is intertwined with many hundreds of others, as well as with our national identity. But we’ve sacrificed portions of it before – DeSoto, Plymouth, Packard, Oldsmobile, and Hudson spring immediately to mind – and it may be that other duplications of effort and expense will have to be eliminated, as well. We’ll miss Mercury, GMC light trucks, Pontiac, Saturn, and Buick, among some others, but not for long. We’ll miss most of all the thousands of jobs that building them provides. But somehow we absorbed the loss of jobs when Franklin, for example – arguably one of the finest cars ever made in the United States – went under during a depression much like the one we appear to be sliding into at the moment.

Thanks to us (the constituents whom our representatives work for, as long as we continually remind them of the fact), it appears that the automotive giants will receive their loans and guarantees in exchange for a temporary government equity position and under the supervision of a master – the Car Czar, as he is already being referred to. This is a great idea, provided the master has the ability to understand fully the problems that have brought us to this pass and the authority to enforce changes in the corporate culture and tunnel-vision labor union members who stand to go down with the ships if the ships cannot be saved.

In a both real and symbolic way, the trimming that lies ahead for the auto industry mirrors the predicament of the middle class, which creates the wealth that all of us enjoy. Much pandered to during the recent presidential campaign, the middle class is currently trimming its own sails, revising its priorities, and cutting out unnecessary extras in the realistic expectation of worse to come. A record high percentage of us say we want our children to obtain a college education, at a time that the tuition and fees of higher education are outstripping inflation and the returns on endowments are shrinking. A record number of us are without health insurance at a time that its cost is rising even faster than that of education. (We older folks who enjoy the uncomplicated benefits of socialized medicine wonder what’s so bad about it.) Record numbers of people are applying for food stamps and showing up at charity food shelves. And most of us are weighing the relative value of the items and activities on which we spend our disposable income, if any.

Many years ago during the Great Depression – which few today remember, except as it scarred our parents’ consciousness – Woody Guthrie sang, “Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered, I’ve seen lots of funny men; some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.” It’s as true today as it was then, and the outcome is the same. If we continue to allow some of us to get away with unearned millions more of our money because we think it out of our hands or too far removed from our situation to affect us, we have only ourselves to blame for the results.

Please remember, by the way, to thank a North Country banker when you see one, for not falling into the sub-prime vortex and for continuing to look at us with a friendly, but jaundiced eye.