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Email: "Where did debt come from?"
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To the editor: Have you really taken the time to ponder where all the money that created the enormous national debt has been spent? Has any of it been spent on improving the lives of the citizens? The government has spent more money protecting U.S. corporations that are deemed too big to fail, funding two wars that we know can’t be won, pandering to Wall Street, giving tax cuts to the top 10 percent of earners and passing legislation written by lobbyists for the drug companies than it has even spent on improving the lives of working people. Trillions of dollars for the very rich and well-connected, and nothing for the benefit of the average citizen. Is this how government is supposed to work? Should we reward members of Congress for this kind of performance by re-electing them? Why do lobbying firms have more access to our representatives than we do? The answer is simple — money. Wall Street has created the best government money can buy. Do you remember in the 1980s and early 1980s how manufacturing corporations always cried about low profits because of the cost of providing fringe benefits? They told us that if they could operate the way other foreign companies did, by not providing health care and pensions, their profits would soar and they would be super-competitive. Well, Congress let them have their way and allowed them to file bankruptcy so they’d be able to eliminate all of those nasty overhead costs. What they didn’t say was that as soon as the fringe benefits were eliminated, the jobs would be eliminated. Thus, they had huge sums of money that allowed them to move their operations to foreign countries where the wage base was below the minimum wage. Incredibly, Congress gave them tax cuts that gave them more money to move offshore more quickly. The stock market soared and financial gurus touted the Dow averages would top 14,000. For the financial industry, happy days were here again. Corporations were selling their wares at even higher prices than when their products were made here. Corporate CEOs, CFOs and other board members were getting billions in bonus payments every year while unemployment started its climb. That was considered good for the economy, you know, the Wall Street economy. But when the massive job losses caught up with the market in the form of repossession of real estate because people no longer had jobs and couldn’t make their mortgage payment, things fell apart. No matter, taxpayer bailouts saved their bacon, and they went right back to selling each other, and small investors, more worthless paper. The stock market is recovering, and 10.2 percent of the work force still doesn’t have jobs. But big bonus payments are back again, and prosperity is just around the corner. I’d like to have a dollar for every day Weirton Steel and Wheeling-Pitt (Severstal) are shut down, so I could participate in the Wall Street recovery and buy that vacation home I’ve always dreamed of in Bermuda. Stan Galownia Mingo Junction

 

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