Left News and Views

ECONOMICS 101 –  (U.S.A. CAN’T SAVE THE WORLD)
The Tampa Tribune Letter to Editor    Published: March 30, 2009

When (oh when!) will the U.S. Citizens and government of the United States learn the basic facts of personal and national economic life?

1.  Fact One, not everybody in a society, a nation, can be rich. If there were no people who needed to work to earn money, no one would make any products or perform any services.  If we were all rich, we would all be poor.  Would you want your garbage man or your auto mechanic to be so wealthy he didn’t need to work?

No, but I would like it if they didn’t charge me like they expected to get rich from my service/repair bills.

2. Fact Two, pyramid schemes always collapse, and the frantic investing in real estate and “flipping your way to wealth” of the recent past is simply a pyramid scheme.

My issue here is this: not everybody with “subprime” loans were looking to “flip” their way to wealth. We just wanted a decent house/home and neighborhood for our kids to grow up in. We don’t think we should have to pay Wells Fargo a quarter of a million dollars to buy a house that is only worth about sixty-five thousand. How does 250,000=65,000? We can’t even refinance to get out of this ridiculous “loan”. If we try to refinance, the penalties are crazy high, and there is no forgiveness on the interest. Even if we won the lottery and could pay off the principle amount on the loan, the loan is written so that we still have to pay the full interest amount. So Wells Fargo will get their 250,000 dollars from us one way or another. But they and the other banks/lenders like them need a government bailout? Bullshit!

3. Fact Three, you can’t painlessly and magically “spend” your way out of a recession/depression.  You have to work, scrimp, save and earn your way out of it.

My family has been working, scrimping, and trying to save since the last Great Depression. We still live below the poverty line, and I really don’t see that changing anytime soon. Stop lying and pretending the “American Dream” is anything other than a totally out-of-reach fantasy for the majority of Americans. If you are born poor in the U.S., odds are very, very high that you will die poor as well. College won’t save you, Work won’t save you. If you are really lucky and talented/gifted, you might find a way out of poverty. But for every one star athlete or rock star who climbs out of poverty, there are literally thousands more that will never have more than their parents did. In fact, many of them will have less than their parents did.

4. Fact Four, the current “stimulus” packages are simply the creation of fake, bogus money unbacked by any real worth or value.  All they will do is create massive debt and massive inflation that will bankrupt people who live on fixed incomes, as most retirees do.  Welcome to the economic ghetto, all you golden-agers who voted for “change”, you’re going to get it!

Where have you been? People on social security have been eating cat food for decades; the poor are already bankrupt and buried in debt. We already have to “work, scrimp, save, and earn” just to keep a roof over our heads and to feed our kids. It’s the middle class, who’ve gotten used to having extra, that will be hurting when they have to learn to do without. The “poor” know how to live without; poverty will do that to you. The “rich” on the other hand, have no idea how to go without; unless it’s morals and compassion, they know how to live without those two items.

5. Fact Five, the United States has only about four percent of the world’s population and about four percent of its livable land area.  We cannot support the rest of the world with foreign aid.  We can’t afford it.  We can’t save the world single-handedly; we’re too small.

I’ll give you this one. How can we save the world’s poor, when we can’t/don’t take care of our own poor?

6.  Fact Six, not everyone on this planet who is unhappy in their home country automatically has the right to come live in the U.S. and be supported by American taxpayers.  We are not being mean-spirited if we refuse to be guilt-tripped into giving away our country.  If we don’t control our borders, we are doomed.

Forget the illegal immigrants coming over the border, I’m more concerned with the criminals hidden amongst them. Immigrants built this country, and we need them. We learn and grow by adding new members to our country. But, we do need to control who comes in, where, and how. Open borders, at this point in history, are just stupid. There are too many people in the world who have axes to grind with our government’s policies.

7. Fact Seven, we cannot be the world’s military policeman.  Again, we just aren’t big enough.

The military/industrial complex would disagree with you there. They need us to keep acting like we’re the world’s enforcers, because that keeps them profitable.

8.  Fact Eight, illegal drugs are destroying our nation economically as well as physically and morally.  We need to find the courage to impose strong, draconian — even capital — punishment on anyone who passes illegal
substances to another person.

Are you high? We’ve had draconian laws (a pot smoker is arrested every 37 seconds in this country) and they have had no effect. If anything, drug use has worsened. I recommend doing some internet research, maybe read a couple of books on the subject that were actually written in the last decade. “Reefer Madness” is a sick joke, and I can’t believe anyone is still ignorant enough to believe that tripe. Maybe if our government hadn’t spent so much time and money bullshitting us about marijuana, we wouldn’t have the problems with cocaine, heroin, and meth that we do today.” If the government lies about how dangerous marijuana is, maybe they’re lying about the other drugs too.” Lack of credibility in one area often leads others to doubt your credibility in other areas.

9. Fact Nine, we can’t let an ever-growing percentage of our population live on welfare, live on the work of others.  Except in the case of people who are totally incapacitated, we have to have the “tough love” to say “those who don’t work, don’t eat,” and it’s their problem, not “society’s”.

Your lack of compassion leads me to think you must be a republican. And not the good kind like the Founding Fathers were, but the new kind who think their “God” gives them the right to dictate to the rest of us how we should live and who is “worthy” or not. I bet you believe the whole “welfare Cadillacs” myth too. Dude, you seriously need to spend some time relying on “welfare” before you start judging the people who have been forced by circumstances beyond their control to need welfare. It isn’t like you just walk into a government office somewhere and say, “show me the money”. I’ve had to use food stamps to feed my kids before, and it is a long, tedious, and utterly humiliating process that no one goes through unless they absolutely have no other choice. People who have never “been there, done that” need to shut the hell up and stop talking out of their ignorant asses. How about if all the rich schmucks who inherited their wealth lose it, since they didn’t actually “work” for it?

All of this is simply “Economics 101″ for today’s world.  If we don’t wake up and learn it quickly, we won’t have a country much longer. And we won’t deserve to.
–HUGH WILLIAMSON, Apollo Beach, Florida

I don’t know Mr. Williamson, and I have no idea where he earned his degree in economics. I do know that so-called economists are some of the evil jackasses who have managed to put our country in the toilet. So, I don’t think you should be bringing up econ.101 at this point.