4 OPINION 4 The Michigan Daily Page 4 Sunday, February 13, 1983 Old foes, new friends, new conference THEY SEEMED like running mates rather than old political foes as they spoke before a packed Rackham Auditorium Thursday. Former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were in fine form as co-chairmen of the first Domestic Policy Association conference centered at Ford's presidential library on Nor- th Campus this week. to help with the repairs, but the church wasn't interested. The city council will soon decide whether Hill House should become a registered historical landmark, but it's probably too late to save the Ark. Church officials say the decision to lease the building to a paying tenant is the result of a year-long study. The church can no longer af- ford to maintain the building, and were once considering demolishing it to make room for a parking lot. David and Linda Siglin, the Ark's managers, will try to rent the house which is both their home and their business. The future looks bleak, they say. If the Ark sails again, it will probably drift to a new location and have to become a profit-making operation. It may be a sad end to an era. Divest or invest?' THE UNIVERSITY is slowly, but surely setting the stage for a confrontation with the state over its investment policies in South Africa. Two weeks ago, Regent Thomas Roach declared the University is not subservient to the state legislature's requirement that it divest from all companies operating in South Africa. And this past week, a faculty commit- tee charged with coming up with a recommen- dation on investment policy, decided the University should keep its holdings in the com- panies. The committees claim that the University should keep its investments in such companies as IBM and Ford, as long as it makes sure the companies practice progressive employment policies with black workers. Fifty faculty members didn't buy that" argument and signed a letter last week calling, for the University to pull out all investments iri companies operating in South Africa. , "The issue is to say yes to equality, yes to democracy in South Africa, and no to racism,". the letter read. Many students and faculty are', charging the University has answered just the, opposite to all three and now may flout state law to boot. Problems in stereo A LTHOUGH UNIVERSITY officials declin-. ed to comment and said it was a minor in- cident, the director of the University's Office of Major Events, was fired last wek as the result of a financial audit. Karen Young, head of the office which. scheduled and promotes concerts on campus, was fired after the audit began on Feb. 1, ac, cording to Roderic Daane, the University's general counsel. Neither the audit nor Major Events bookkeeping records will be made public; Daane said. If the two were released, it could, be "personally damaging" to Young, he said.}: This is not the only financial problem Major Events has run into in recent months. About. $2,000, most of which was Major Events' receipts, was taken from the Michigan Unioi last Thanksgiving, Ann Arbor police said. Of- ficials said there is no connection between the theft and either the audit or Young's firing. A. The two made history of sorts as well, accor- ding to another chief executive-University President Harold Shapiro. In his opening remarks to the 1,000 students and faculty members at Rackam, Shapiro said it was the first time any two presidents had appeared at a college campus together since Thomas Jeffer- son invited James Monroe to the University of Virginia during Monroe's presidency. Those lucky enough to get tickets for the Rackham assembly heard the former presidents agree on various foreign policy issues concerning the Mideast, the Soviet Union, and China, as well as the need for more presidential control over the running of U.S. foreign policy. Students were allowed to ask questions via note cards screened by Shapiro. Participants at the conference itself sought solutions to getting citizens more involved in domestic policy decision-making. "The aim of I The Jimmy and Jerry show at the Ford Library. the Domestic Association," according to Ford, "is to generate public discussion of major issues throughout the country." The two-day conference, primarily spon- sored by the Kettering Foundation, attracted such notables as television personality Norman Lear, pollster Daniel Yankelovich, and former ambassador to China and University Professor Leonard Woodcock. But that all-important goal of citizen par- ticipation was limited to a few questions on note cards, if that much. Sinking ship T LOOKS LIKE this will be the final voyage for the Ark and its blend of coffee and folk music. At its governing board meeting Wed- nesday night, the First Presbyterian Church decided to find a rent-paying tenant for Hill House, the Ark's rent-free home of the past 15 years. Hill house is in desperate need of over $200,000 in repairs. The Ark's staff volunteered The Week in Review was compiled by Daily staff writers Neil Chase, Kent Red- ding, David Spak, and Glen Young. Ir 4 Sinclair Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Vol. XCIII, No. 111 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board One step for the jobless NC iEGEIF ONL Y VE/ L STEN Tc 1HO iT "4o - t1r/ '4 AFTER BEING at loggerheads for months over how and whether to provide for the more than 14 million jobless, Congress and the president finally have started on the road to compromise. The economy may or may not be on the mend, but regardless, the bulk of the millions out of work will not par- ticipate in the benefits of an upswing for a long time. The administration's own calculations are that the unem- ployment rate will remain in double digits for the remainder of the year. Such prospects make some kind of relief for the jobless imperative. Previously the president had called jobs programs "wasteful and un- necessary," but finally, the administration has dropped its blind disregard for the unemployed and of- fered $4.3 billion to create jobs. While the adminsitration's offer is a laudable move in the right direction, it represents only the first step in a series needed to deal with the nation's chronic unemployment. With the nation's unemployment rate now standing at 10.2 percent, the kind of money the president is talking about won't go too far. A more workable figure would be closer to $6 billion which would create thousands of additional jobs to take people off the food stamp and unemployment benefit rolls and put them to work on the nation's crumbling roads and bridges. But even more importantly, jobs programs need to be accompanied with job retraining. Much of unem- ployment is institutional. Thousands laid off from the manufacturing sector in the steel and auto industries, will never be rehired. Without retraining, these people will never find jobs in the service sector of the economy, which is currently the nation's major job- producer. Economic recovery may have already begun, but that only means that things are not getting worse. The president is finally on the right course by agreeing to a jobs program, but he has to move further and faster. He must remember, each percentage point of unemployment deprives the federal treasury $26 billion which means unemployment costs everybody, not just the jobless. IP -- .. r -' .. , . ,.. v 1. i _ YIL _ t r it# , alhfi 1 /at % / m y 4 I f, 4 I I I Retailers turn to luxury goods market "WATCH ME MIT THOSE FOREOE1RS, KITY ' Y } J4.:" By Thomas Brom Despite the worst recession in half a century, marketing exper- ts from New York to California have some surprising advice for clients: "Move up to luxury goods." Indeed, mainstream department stores, mail-order houses, restaurants, magazines and banks across the country are taking that advice-deserting the "new poor" of the lower middle class. for a rapidly growing population of the newly affluent. "There is a definite split in the marketplace," says Jeff Mac- Callum, senior editor at Chain Store Age. "We're seeing a shift to high-quality, high-margin goods from the specialty shops to the discounters. Retailers are upscaling, targeting affluent ur- ban couples who think nothing of buying $300 suits or putting $10,000 of merchandise into their homes." RFT1ATI. ANAI.Vf'1'Q wnvPra 1980s, producing an upper-in- come category of 25.5 million families. "The net result," the editors conclude, "will be the creation of a consuming elite." Store after store is taking the demographers' message as gospel, tailoring apparel and general merchandise for the wealthy. Associated Dry Goods is concentrating its expansion plans on Lord & Taylor, J.W. Robinson and Goldwaters, as well as its "top end" Caldor discount chain in New England. MACCALLUM points out that even mass marketers like Macy's and J.C. Penney are intentionally lopping off "downscale" sales volume-and making up the dif- ference at the bottom line. "In the first 10 months of 1982, Pen- ney's sales declined .8 percent," he says, "but earnings went through the roof. That trend is accelerating." In fact, the retail market now is littered with those who could not Direct-mail retailers also are shifting their customer base to match projected income shifts in the 1980s. Spiegel, the country's fourth-largest catalog sales marketer, has abandoned its traditional buyers for working women 25 to 54 years old in households with incomes above $34,000. "THE OLD strategy," said company president Henry Johnson, "was to hook low- income but creditworthy customers on extended-payment plans and make money on the carrying charges. I saw the op- portunity for developing a high- end department store." This year Spiegel will issue four specialty catalogs in furs, lingerie, linens and gourmet cookware. Alden's, Spiegel's Chicago competitor for the Midwestern small town market, also began sending specialty catalogs 'to higher-income urban families. But it was too little, too late. Last and Goodlife. There also are top- end fashion magazines, women'ยง magazines, home magazines and especially food magazines. Gourmet has a circulation of - 650,000; Cuisine 725,000; Bon Ai- petit 1.3 million. Safeway was so impressed it bought the Bon AP-- petit name and converted several of its stores to gourmet delicatessens. CBS INC. bought Cuisine after" making a similar assessment.", Cuisine publisher Anne Sutherland says the next decade will see increasing numbers of" people "who will want to reward themselves and who will insist on living well." MacCallum at Chain Store Age believes expanded household io9 come is behind much of the u scale wave. "Two or more peop are now working in more thal two-thirds of the countrys households," he says, "and mote people can afford upscale me chandise."