TRADITION CAN BE REDEFINED, BUT THE VALUES HAVE TO REMAIN

Costs of job injuries doubled to $70 BILLION in the last five years. That's why you're seeing workman's compensation costs go up (400%) likewise. More and more businesses are going to increase their safety programs and too many people are finding injuries where none existed in the past. Someone eventually pays.

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Youth employment increased 2.8 million to 19.7 million this summer, but the unemployment rate climbed to 14.4% from 13.7% in 1991, the Labor Department said. The youth labor force surged a surprising 3.6 million to 30.9 million - despite the weak job market and the shrinking size of the age 16-24 group.

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I've cut out certain comments to keep the following excerpts of a column by David Boaz as non-abrasive and factual as possible, but it bears repeating.

Clinton-Gore: The Ultimate Insider Ticket:

They're both all-American boys from small Southern towns, outsiders in an era of change, devoted to public service.

At least that's the Clinton campaign's perspective.

Here's another view: Bill Clinton and Al Gore make up the most totally "insider" ticket ever nominated by an American political party. Both men have had virtually no life outside politics. Not only have they never "met a payroll," as the saying goes, they've spent precious little time on a private-sector payroll.

Bill Clinton grew up relatively poor, but since the age of 18 he has lived nowhere except elite college campuses and the Governor's Mansion. After law school he taught at a state university for less than two years before being elected attorney general at the age of 30.

Since then, except for a two-year forced exile as a politically connected rainmaker for a Little Rock law firm, he has been in public office. It's revealing to recall that at the age of 23 he had been planning a political career for "many years."

Al Gore is an even more complete product of the public sector. He was born and raised in Washington, D.C., the son of a 32-year veteran of Congress. He grew up in a Washington apartment building on Embassy Row that was home to many members of Congress and married a woman from Washington (Tipper Gore, who spoke in Cape Friday). Except for about four years as a journalist, he has spent his entire life on the public payroll, entering Congress at the age of 28.

As it happens, their personal backgrounds make Clinton and Gore the perfect ticket for the modern Democratic party, which has become not just the party of interest groups but the party of government itself. At recent Democratic conventions, upwards of 40 per cent of the delegates have been government employees.

The fundamental class division in any society is not between rich and poor, or between farmers and city dwellers, but between tax payers and tax consumers. Taxes define an individual's relationship to the state. Although George Bush's Republicans can hardly be viewed as the party of tax payers, Clinton and Gore's Democrats are certainly the ultimate party of tax consumers.

With a base of support so heavily rooted in government employees, it's no surprise that Gov. Clinton raised taxes 43 times (127 by his own state report), or that Sen. Gore has been such an enthusiastic supporter of tax increases and government spending (the biggest-spending member of the Senate two years in a row, according to the National Taxpayers Union).

Government employees obviously have particular interests that differ from those of the rest of society - note that 75 per cent of the American people oppose a tax increase but a plurality of Democratic convention delegates supports one.

The American Founders believed in rotation in office; they thought leading citizens ought to take a year or two out of their normal lives to serve in public office. Holding office was a duty, not an aspiration and certainly not a career. What would the Founders think of bright, talented men who entered public office by the age of 30 and never left it?

Mr. Boaz is executive vice-president of the Cato Institute and editor of Left, Right and Babyboom: America's New Politics.

FOOTNOTE: George Bush has attacked Bill Clinton's record, saying that he raised taxes 128 times during his tenure as governor. Clinton supporters called the attacks a distortion of his record, saying that the list the Bush campaign issued was filled with errors and that the real number was not even half that much.

On Sept. 3 Clinton campaign officials quietly issued their own list of the governor's tax increases, prepared by the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, a state agency under Clinton's control.

Clinton's official list of tax and fee hikes totaled 127 ... 34 new tax increases and 93 fee increases.