Bob Herbert's final column for the New York Times is a humdinger. And not in a cheerful way.

Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone. The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

As a case study in misplaced priorities, Herbert points to an article from Friday's Times, G.E.s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether. Maybe the unemployed and poor just need better lobbyists? The NYT is losing a good one in Bob Herbert.