Something is terribly wrong when AT&T lays off 40,000 people, and Wall Street cheers. And AT&T is surprised when 40,000 people suddenly switch their long-distance carriers.

Something is terribly wrong when Wall Street hears a lot of those people found jobs in February, and the stock market plunges 3 percent. And it does it again this past week with more good news from the Labor Department.

Something is terribly wrong when major corporations are encouraged to ship jobs overseas, and the corporations expect the same demand for those products shipped back to this country, for some reason not comprehending that the people they laid off aren't buying a whole lot.

Something is very wrong when the CEO of one of those corporations defends laying off thousands of people, says his own multi-million-dollar salary is justified, and that ''business is not a social experiment.'' I hate to tell him, but business has been part of the great social experiment we call civilization since the serpent said to Eve, ''Have I got a deal for you!''

Yes, we are in a global economy. We always have been, from the days of Marco Polo. But, like Tip O'Neill's exhortation that all politics is local, so is all economics.

If you want the freshest produce, support your local farmer. If you want the shoe factory to stay open, don't buy tennies made in sweatshops in Asia. If you want the state of Maine to be the vanguard of modern technology, and our kids to be able to find high-tech jobs without leaving the state, you don't get up in town meeting and cut the funding for the computer program in the local schools.

And you don't gripe when a school board insists that a high school diploma should mean something more than a certificate of good attendance. It does our kids no favors to tell them they are doing a great job in school when they are not. It only dooms them to failure when employers do not see those same charms, and they get fired for reasons they do not understand.

The student who is not made responsible for his poor school performance is the young man who does not feel any responsibility after fathering a child out of wedlock, is the man in his 30s who does not understand why lying to his clients or customers is bad policy and why the district attorney's office is harassing him, is the corporation which does not understand why it has any obligation whatsoever to the faithful employees who have been with the company for 25 or 30 years, when the bottom line would look so much better without those generous salaries, which collectively, amount to just about the salary the CEO makes.

What is wrong with this picture?

What is wrong with this picture is the lack of any sense that we are in this together. Remember, no man is an island. And the bell is now tolling for thee and me.

The first thing we need to do as a society is to make it clear that people are expected to take responsibility for their actions.

When my children were young, the only source of heat we had in our cabin in the woods was a couple of wood stoves. And my mother was concerned about the children burning themselves.

Kids are smart. Even when ''hot'' was about the extent of their young vocabulary, they would get a glint in their eye, and extend one finger toward the stove, just to see what we would do.

After a couple of warnings, ''hot, that's hot,'' each of my kids extended that finger all the way to the stove. And the eyes lit up in surprise and pain. And I would say, ''I told you, that's hot. Here, let me kiss it.''

Guess what? They only pulled that stunt once. My kids learned very young that ultimately they were responsible for their own actions, and that they would reap the benefits or suffer the consequences of their decisions.

The difficulty comes when events are beyond one's ability to control. A job layoff, a major illness, desertion by the family bread-winner, a natural disaster like a flood or hurricane.

Since we are a democracy, we have set up a system where different levels of government make decisions about helping people, our neighbors and members of our community, past these disasters over which they have no control. The trick is to structure the system so that it helps only the truly needy and out of luck. None of us wants to be played for suckers, and we've all heard the stories of the lobsters and ice cream bought with food stamps, while we're trying to stretch the hamburger-helper.

That's why it is critical, in the debate over social programs and entitlements, that we keep reminding ourselves of the reasons those programs exist.

Social security was not designed to make wealthy retirees even more comfortable. It was designed to keep old people from starving and freezing to death.

Welfare was set up to keep families together in times of crisis, instead of split apart, with kids being sent to orphanages or on trains to farm communities where farmers would look over the assembled waifs, far too reminiscent of a slave auction, and take in the healthiest as a cheap form of field labor.

The trick is in figuring out when to stop coming to the rescue, when to let that one finger get a little burned.

That's the real debate going on in Washington these days. But what I see far too little of, in Washington and on the streets of Maine, is the broad picture, the understanding of how things are connected to other things, simple cause and effect.

It does seem a little strange that an accumulation of the gases from using hair spray cans could affect the ozone layer high above the earth. Or that the use of pesticides could affect the average sperm count in men worldwide, which has been declining rapidly the past 20 years. Or that the debate over providing medical care to disabled children could shut the government down last winter.

I think Congress needs a healthy dose of common sense. And the only way to get it into that great body is to elect people who have it and will bring it with them.

I hope you will find that my way of looking at the world would be a useful viewpoint in Washington, and that you'll vote for me in the June primary.