Letters

The roots of an unethical, unsustainable economy are now laid bare and compounded by the predicted demographic change in the labor force.

Should it ever have been legal to use the J-1? Cultural exchange programs as a source of cheap, temporary seasonal help? Was it not deliberately employed to undermine unions and labor in general, thus feeding the destruction of the middle class and the current massive economic divide? It was surely a source of exploitation of many human beings. Tourism grown with this practice is exposed worldwide as a poor foundation for an economy.

Listen to the things people bemoan: lack of affordable housing, traffic jams and lack of things to do (that is from the article on real estate trends). They seem unrelated but are all the product of a leisure class that avoids all labor. Traffic jams would about disappear if these people did their own lawns, cleaned and maintained their own houses, cleaned their own pools, cooked their own meals and looked after their own children.

What might follow? Less time for shopping. Loss of interest in massive, often useless houses. How about turning your 50-acre estate back into a farm? Less CO2 emission and a lower impact on the environment in general. A smaller, more sustainable economy would be forced to emerge.

What made the East End special was its natural beauty and the self-reliant people who lived here. It has been destroyed by the money and the business owners who chose cheap labor over locals and the towns that fed the labor and housing shortage with constant tax hikes. How people are still sold on the frothy mystique of the “Hamptons” is a mystery to me.

To all who created these problems, I offer an old saying: You made your bed, now lie in it.

Amy Paradise

Hampton Bays