Report on State’s Competitiveness

Joel Kotkin’s “Ueberroth’s Breath of Fresh Economic Air” (Opinion, April 26) is missing an important ingredient: the element that fuels real economic growth and stability. It’s the fraction Caterpillar filtered out of its post-agreement stipulations and Ronald Reagan shut off when he fired the air controllers.

Anyone, be it Ueberroth, the Council on California Competitiveness, Kotkin, or Washington who thinks this country can survive without a middle class, has his head up and locked. When economists, business leaders, politicians and journalists talk of “painful sacrifices” to save the economy, you can be assured investment in the worker’s welfare is not intended.

LOUIS ST. MARTIN

Pomona