The plan to hit up drivers for 14 bucks when they enter Westchester County (the bridge has a one-way toll system) is very likely a trial balloon, similar to the Port Authority’s plan last year to impose huge new hikes on its bridges and tunnels that connect New York and New Jersey. Governors Cuomo and Christie expressed horror and outrage, and the PA, as if on cue, immediately reduced its request, but tolls went up all the same.

That’s the likely scenario for the new Tappan Zee Bridge—the toll will be significantly higher than it is now, but it won’t be as high as the request. That’s how politics works. But here’s the problem: Government is making it increasingly expensive for commuters and commercial traffic, and that’s simply not good news for the city and regional economy.

Visitors from other parts of the country are invariably shocked when they find they have to fork over double-digit tolls for the privilege of using a bridge or a tunnel. Then again, if they find that fee shocking, they undoubtedly fall into a dead faint when they receive their first parking ticket. Welcome to New York.

It’s expensive here, but it’s incumbent on government—especially on quasi-public agencies like the Port Authority—to keep the cost of transportation reasonable. Agencies like the Port Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority often act in an less-than-transparent manner, and the PA has strayed far from its core mission of providing efficient transportation facilities for the New York-New Jersey region.

If the region’s transportation agencies are more concerned with building real estate empires or serving as patronage dumping grounds, they do a huge disservice to the region’s commuters and, therefore, to the regional economy. Like it or not, New York City’s vitality depends on the willingness of millions of New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island residents to make the often-tiresome commute into and out of Manhattan every day. Some Manhattanites sneeringly refer to commuters as the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, as if they are a lower form of life.

But if a significant portion of the region’s commuters decided that they were tired of being seen as a cash cow for unaccountable public transportation agencies, the sidewalks of New York would look very empty indeed, and the economies of New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island would benefit as a result.

New York’s elected officials may deny it, but they have plenty of power over the region’s transportation agencies. Their appointees are on the agencies’ boards, after all. They have to stop playing games and get serious about keeping the cost of commuting affordable. The city’s economy depends on those out-of-towners.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn passed that crucial test recently when she refused to back down on an ill-advised bill despite intense public pressure from high-profile supporters, especially feminist Gloria Steinem.

We’ve been critical of Ms. Quinn in the past because she seemed to take positions based not on principle but on political calculation. She is, of course, one of the leading candidates to succeed Michael Bloomberg as mayor next year. As Speaker of the Council, Ms. Quinn is the second most-powerful elected official in municipal politics, so her performance in the role should offer some insight into the kind of mayor she would be.

Ms. Quinn has the power to bring to the Council floor an ill-advised bill that would force most businesses to provide five days of paid sick leave per year. If the bill were brought to the floor, Ms. Quinn’s colleagues would trip over each other to vote in favor. The Speaker knows that. She also knows that this is not the time to slap the private sector with a job-killing mandate from government. Unemployment in the city increased from 9.7 percent in May to 10 percent in June, a startling and frustrating development.

Clearly, then, it is incumbent on elected officials to find ways to make hiring easier, not harder. In an ideal world, the Council would take Mr. Bloomberg’s lead in trying to ease burdens and regulations that appear to be holding the city back from the roaring recovery we so desperately need.

It goes with saying, however, that city politics is hardly an ideal world, especially with elections looming next year. That’s why Ms. Quinn has used her considerable power as Speaker to prevent the bill from making its way out of committee. She shares the mayor’s belief that however altruistic the motives behind the bill, the end result would be even slower job creation.

Ms. Quinn’s position has earned the ire of some supporters, most notably Ms. Steinem, who has framed the bill as a women’s issue. She says women disproportionately stay home and miss work to look after a sick child, leading to personal catastrophes like the loss of a job or an apartment.

It would be nice if the bill’s supporters had data rather than anecdotes to bolster their argument, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. The mandate could not be more poorly timed. Women (and men) are losing their jobs already; women (and men) are losing their apartments because the city’s private sector is simply not creating jobs. The most recent unemployment figures offer sad testimony as to the health of the city’s economy.

Christine Quinn gets it. She understands that the bill may have good intentions, but she is also aware that good intentions are not enough. The city needs to create jobs, and the sick-leave bill would hinder, rather than help, that process.

Her position shows genuine leadership and political toughness. That’s a good sign.

So now is not the time for politicians to pass an election-year increase in the state’s minimum wage, currently set at $7.25 an hour. Hikes in the minimum wage invariably lead to fewer new entry-level jobs, and that’s something the city and state can ill afford.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the other day that while he supports a minimum-wage increase, such a measure would never get through the Republican-controlled state Senate. So, in essence, the governor seems prepared to throw in the towel on this issue, even though he is under tremendous pressure from his fellow Democrats and various advocacy groups to force the issue.

Mr. Cuomo is right about the politics: Republicans in the Senate surely would kill a proposed increase to $8.50 an hour. But he should also make it clear that the issue of timing involves more than politics. It’s simply common sense.

Economic policy in 2012 should have one and only one outcome in mind: job creation. Raising the minimum wage would have precisely the opposite effect, as study after study has shown. In better times, like the mid-1990s, increases in the minimum wage have been implemented without destroying entry-level jobs. But those increases were approved when the creative engines of capitalism were running on full throttle.

Today, the engines continue to sputter. An increase in the minimum wage very likely would lead to a stall, which would help nobody.

The Cuomo administration has put into place several policies aimed at encouraging job growth. A new tax credit is available to companies that hire young males who have suffered through long-term unemployment. A new low-income housing program has the doubly beneficial effect of creating construction jobs while offering the poor better housing choices.

Those are precisely the kinds of economic development programs that lead to long-term benefits for the poor.

But in an election year, Democrats in the Legislature would prefer to appease politically powerful special interests with support for a minimum-wage hike. It is to Mr. Cuomo’s credit that he seems determined to resist the temptation, regardless of his reasons.

Why, Charles Murray, that’s who! Mr. Murray, who’s best known for cowriting The Bell Curve, the 1994 tract on allegedly bedrock racial gaps in cognitive learning, now delivers a glum sermon on class polarization among white American communities, arguing in his new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, that the cultural gap poses something of an existential peril to democratic civil society. With a new cognitive elite increasingly calling the shots, Mr. Murray writes, “the danger increases that the people who have so much influence on the course of the nation have little direct experience with the lives of ordinary Americans, and make their judgments about what’s good for other people based on their own highly atypical lives.” Along the way, Mr. Murray makes a clumsy attempt at pathologizing the terminal out-of-touchness of our brave new elite, via clunky, quasi-satirical diagnoses such as “Over-Educated Snob Syndrome” (a weakness for elite cultural preferences) and the “Europe Syndrome” (the liberal elite’s romance with the welfare state).

Mr. Murray has a point here. Any casual weekend tour of Tribeca or Soho can turn up no end of culture arbiters and tastemakers comically adrift in a privileged, high-toned world of their own. And to the extent that such characters exert influence over America’s power structure, there is some cause for general alarm.

But rather than examining the remorseless ways that privilege, or the lack thereof, shapes our lives, Mr. Murray dotes on the battery of taste preferences that allegedly prove that members of one class—the snobbish uppers—view their social inferiors invidiously. “It is a problem,” Mr. Murray intones, “if Yale professors, or producers of network news programs, or CEOs of great corporations, or presidential advisers cannot empathize with the priorities of truck drivers.”

One might well counter that, the overall complexion of our transportation economy being what it is, such empathy is cheap. And truck driving furnishes a revealing case in point. After Jimmy Carter initiated the rampant deregulation of the industry in 1980, wages for truckers fellbysome 30 percentin 20 years, while working hours increased and benefits plummeted. Among nonunion owner-operators, less than 30 percent had health insurance, and less than 10 percent had any retirement savings, according to a 2008 survey.

But when Mr. Murray invokes “the priorities of truck drivers,” he is talking only about their own alleged culture preferences. The economic disparity is less meaningful to him than the distressing news that “the new upper class is selective in its radio listening,” and that “the new upper class does not often frequent bars with pool tables in them, bars that allow smoking, or bars with many wide screens showing professional sports.”

This species of Mad Lib-style social analysis is wearily familiar to readers of the impressionistic works of diehard haute-bourgeois apologists such as David Brooks and Richard Florida. (Indeed, in an exasperating note on his “qualitative” assessment of upper-class mores, Mr. Murray owns that he leans heavily on the “generalizations” that Mr. Brooks and Mr. Florida “draw about the tastes and preferences of their Bobos and Creative Class, respectively,” and that “my generalizations are consistent with theirs,” as though these lazy exercises in catalog-based taste-spotting are somehow primary empirical texts in their own right.)

But where Coming Apart becomes actively offensive is in its account of cultural decline amid the American working class. In Mr. Murray’s account, the harmless downmarket pastime of drinking in a smoke-filled, pool table-equipped saloon conceals a far more troubling pathology roiling beneath the surface of white working-class life. Because, left to their own devices without the guiding hand of a morally confident elite, working-class Americans have parted ways with the core founding virtues of the republic: industriousness, honesty, marriage and religiosity. The result, Mr. Murray darkly warns, is a body of cultural differences “that affect the ability of people to live satisfying lives, the ability of communities to function as communities, and the ability of America to survive as America.”

Mr. Murray’s insights here are no more compelling than they were in The Bell Curve. He constructs composite demographic and occupational portraits of an ascendant knowledge-elite neighborhood (adopting the name of Belmont) and a downwardly mobile working-class community (Fishtown). And in his bid to render Fishtown as a closed-off dysfunctional culture of poverty, distortions abound. For example, in assailing the deficient work ethic of Fishtowners, Mr. Murray explicitly discounts the impact of the vast exodus of higher-wage union jobs from working-class communities since the 1970s. After all, he reasons, “insofar as men need to work to survive, falling hourly income does not discourage work.” Sure, an out-of-work Fishtown man in the prime working-age demographic of 30 to 49 “may be depressed” at the paucity of well-paying jobs, but come on: “Why would you not want work if a job opening landed in your lap,” even at near-poverty minimum wage rates? “Why would you not work a full forty hours if the hours were available? Why not work more than forty hours?”

The net effect here is to preach a sort of deranged stoicism to the less fortunate—a curious turn of argument for a writer who accuses liberals of cultural elitism. In a culture governed by, say, workplace solidarity as opposed to the talk-radio kind, you don’t automatically countenance cuts in your wages with a servile offer to work more overtime; rather, you organize, and occasionally strike.

Mr. Murray’s fretting about working-class moral decline contrasts with his prim deference before overclass prerogatives. Affecting to consider whether the financiers who orchestrated the 2008 meltdown demonstrated a moral decline of their own, Mr. Murray announces that “it is a question for which I have been unable to find good answers.” Likewise, trends in sky-high executive compensation provoke this cautious disclaimer: “People within the corporate world with whom I have discussed the issue vary in their assessment of how much the cozy-little-club phenomenon applies” in ratcheting pay packages upward, but “finding hard data on the how-much question is … difficult.” If only some AIG executive had been spotted in a nonsmoking, TV-free bar, why, then we’d know how deeply the financial sector had broken faith with the civil society!

The healthiest response to Mr. Murray may be to subject him to a dose of his own medicine. The author seems to be suffering from what one might call Think Tank Apparatchik Syndrome (TTAS)—the condition whereby thinkers such as Mr. Murray, a longtime fellow of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, anoint themselves all-purpose culture prophets, hysterically dedicated to denying the actual force of unequal economic arrangements in American life. TTAS clearly saps the work ethic of the intellectual class, since it prods them into trotting out the same shopworn diagnoses of our social ills over and over again, creating a virtual cottage industry in extended quotations from Tocqueville and Robert “Bowling Alone” Putnam.

Worse, TTAS blinds hireling intellectuals to their own true status, as these fearless apostles of the free market pile up honoraria from corporate donors and nonprofit foundations, while dogmatically denying morale-sapping government handouts to less enviably positioned souls.

Fortunately, there’s a ready cure for TTAS: Just go out and engage an actual truck driver in conversation on a subject he genuinely cares about.

editorial@observer.com

Or at least any capital-m Money.

The New York Times Economix blog posted the results of combing through the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The survey compiled individual income data against each respective polled person's income. And guess who was at the bottom of the 25 most popular majors?

Well, that was actually "Miscellaneous Biology" majors, who are probably all P.E. teachers (no offense to our nation's great physical education specialists). But right above them:

English majors. Specifically, "English Language and Literature."

They were the second most popular majors: 1,938,988 of the respondents, exactly (the most popular major polled was actually Accounting, responded for to the tune of 2,296,601 undergrads).

Only 3.8% of the English majors were One Percenters; interestingly enough, only 3.8% of the One Percenters polled were English majors. Compare that to a degree like International Relations: 6.7% of those polled were One Percenters, but as only 146,781 respondents polled as International Relations majors, they accounted for only 0.5% of the One Percenters. But the Times did us the favor of noting the odds by profession of getting rich:

Newspaper writers and editors? One in 62.

Sounds about right, if actually quite generous. Might be time to decamp for the Golden State, as one in nine Hollywood screenwriters are one percenters, and one in fourteen television or radio writers are richer than everyone else, too. Next time the WGA goes on strike, you might want to keep in mind how healthy your reserve of empathy is.

The degree most likely to make you Rich People: Health and Medical Preparatory Programs, but only 142,345 polled graduated with Pre-Med degrees. They make up only 0.9% of Rich People Polled, which means it's among the least likely for you to choose.

So where's the money really at, then? Ask an economist. Literally. Economics majors were the sixth most popular among respondents, as they accounted for 5.4% of all the One Percenters polled. 8.2% of them were in the top 1% of earners, which means if you major in Economics and you're the betting type, you basically have a 8:100 chance of becoming a Rich Economist.

Wonder what the people who write the New York Times Economix blog majored in (and/or how bitter they are that they abandoned their original calling).

What the Top 1% of Earners Majored In [NYT Economix]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Any large protest against the so-called establishment, whatever that may mean, is bound to attract a motley crew of aging baby boomers and feckless hipsters who fancy themselves revolutionaries. But the protesters also include many innocent victims of the terrible downturn, from college-educated young people with few if any job prospects to middle-aged parents who wonder if they’ll ever work again.

It is wrong to dismiss the fears and frustrations of those who would rather be working—somewhere, anywhere—than protesting outdoors in the autumn chill. That said, it is also fair to argue that their anger is misplaced. Shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge won’t bring back their old jobs or create new ones. Cheering the demagogic speeches of radical-chic agitators won’t create public sympathy.

The economic mess is global, and by no means is it the fault of “Wall Street”—whatever that means. Failed economic policy in Washington has led to scandalously high levels of debt and billions in wasteful spending. Regulations have choked innovation and job creation.

Do the demonstrators believe more government spending and regulation will create the jobs they want? If so, they are mistaken.

In fact, Wall Streeters might consider taking a page from the protests outside their offices. Perhaps they should take a day off to protest outside the offices of politicians who burden them with useless paperwork, who impose mandates that destroy jobs.

The frustration and anger of the recession’s victims are understandable. But they need to realize that the targets of their anger would like nothing more than a return to prosperity and low unemployment.

It turns out that Wall Street and Occupy Wall Street could have something important in common: both want a return to better times.

The Adbusters writers had a clear aim:

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum – that Mubarak must go – over and over again until they won. Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand? The most exciting candidate that we've heard so far is one that gets at the core of why the American political establishment is currently unworthy of being called a democracy: we demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It's time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY, we're doomed without it.

But the leaderless movement, which at any one time must be counted by hundreds rather than thousands, is held together by enterprising volunteers who are coordinating the protest via various working groups. The message about a presidential commission has been completely lost. Media attempting to report on the protest grabbed quotes like, "I want to create spectacles," and “Oh, we’re just here, like, you know, protesting what’s going on.”

After spending a Saturday at the protest, it did seem the various grievances nursed by protesters had a common theme: a vague but certain notion that the richest percentile of the country remains fat and happy as the going-on-five-year-old recession continues to batter the middle and working class.

What do the protesters want to do about it? Less clear! But we found some suggestions in the hand-made signs they carried over the weekend.

The Congressional Republican leaders, like their counterparts on the Democratic side and in the White House, all understand that the debt limit must be increased -- just as they understood the imperative of the bank bailouts two years ago. But that won't stop them from indulging in reckless rhetoric -- or from seeking to take advantage of the situation in ways that could result in dangerous consequences, as they vow to hold the debt ceiling hostage to enormous budget cuts. These veteran leaders appear to have learned nothing since the debacle of 1995, when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich told the bond industry that he would allow the country to default on its debt unless President Clinton agreed to his plans to slash Medicare and other federal programs. "I don't care what the price is," he declared.

That was a very different time -- and the price of default would be far higher today, in a world where nations and states on the verge of insolvency continuously threaten to scuttle global recovery. Back in the Nineties, the Clinton Administration was able to outwit Gingrich both politically and fiscally, using tactics that preserved the full faith and credit of the Treasury without capitulating to Republican demands. Clinton forced the Republicans to fulfill their bluff. Now the numbers are bigger, the space to maneuver is smaller, the potential downside is incalculable -- and the nihilistic ignorance of the Tea Party faction is the dominant attitude within the GOP.

Even the merest prospect of default would be gravely damaging to American prestige and prosperity, continuing the apparent Republican project of hastening our national decline that began with the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses (and the refusal to pay for that multi-trillion-dollar disaster). So it is understandable that the Obama administration would want to find some way to lure the Republicans and their fanatical minions back from taking us all over the cliff.

What the Republicans have hinted they must have in order to release the debt hostage is a package of budget cuts amounting to at least $100 billion this year -- or a rollback of spending on discretionary programs (excepting veterans, defense and homeland security) to 2008 levels -- and perhaps a deal to destroy Social Security and Medicare as well. They have carefully refused to offer specific cuts that might anger their own constituencies.

No doubt the Obama White House, which too often prefers "bipartisanship" to principled confrontation, will be tempted to make such a deal. The problem is that cutting the budget so drastically will undo the stimulative effects of the December tax-and-spending agreement -- and plunge the economy back into recession. The President loses either way.

Perhaps the time has come for the Democrats to adopt a different strategy. Let the Republicans govern, or misgovern. Don't rescue them from their own recklessness. Don't vote to raise the debt ceiling unless and until the Republican leadership supports the bill -- and if they refuse, let them take the responsibility for the consequences. Let's see how long they can listen to the screaming of their major contributors on Wall Street as the world economy shudders. Make the hostage takers surrender this time.