Letters to the Editor
bostonMA
Published Letters: 36 Editor's Choice: 22
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@Bacchus
[Read the article: Overbuilt America]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I see a few ways to read Andrew Leonard's article. To pick two:
- The incentives born of government policy and greed were so substantial as to create millions of vacant homes while millions remain homeless. This is a poor outcome.
- There is great wealth in the United States, and the disparity is great between those with and those without. This frames a moral obligation to resolve this disparity.
I choose to read this article as a moral commentary. I saw the groundwork being placed for a moral justification to compel collective action to benefit one over another. This is a common justification for theft. If I was wrong in this view, I hope Mr Leonard considers that others may have also misread his intentions.
As to the charge that I am some corporate apologist or supporter of the current administration, I would encourage you to look at any of my prior letters. For example, on February 26th I wrote about how we are often distracted from the core problems facing this nation, including:
... issues like a war costing thousands of lives and spreading anti-US and pro-terrorist sentiment to an entire region, massive trade deficits crushing the value of the US dollar in which all of us are saving for retirement, unprecedented budget deficits, record national debt, lost individual liberties, rampant corporatism throughout the executive of legislative branches of government, a looming series of bank collapses, the purchasing of our American employers by sovereign wealth funds based in China and the Middle East...
Part of me also wants to believe that we need to spend more time directly talking about the future we have mortgaged for our children, both in terms of their standard of living, their lifetime of debt to foreign governments, and their daunting struggle to overcome anti-US hatred by much of the globe.
Finally, I disagree with your condemnation of private charity. In my view many individuals find joy in such work and generosity, and it does generate real world results. However, the coercion of taking by taxes for the unquestioned use of others breeds resentment among those who might otherwise be more giving and sympathetic.
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What kind of jobs must be created?
[Read the article: 500,000 new jobs -- are we supposed to be impressed?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are much more fundamental changes for long-term job creation to happen in the United States than any stimulus checks cut by borrowing from China and Japan will provide.
This nation must start producing real products that can be sold to the rest of the world and not just shuffle money and credit around in the service sector. Our trade deficit approaching $1 trillion per year speaks to this ongoing challenge. Until this is resolved alongside reductions in massive government budget deficits from war and entitlement spending, we can expect the US dollar to continue to weaken in value. All the while, foreign entities (including sovereign wealth funds) will buy up US assets in exchange for all the dollars we have shipped to them for flat screen televisions, designer clothing, plastic toys, and interest on trillions in debt.
Success will come when jobs in the primary (agriculture, mining, etc) and secondary (manufacturing) sectors begin to replace those in the service sector. Financial and insurance service jobs, retail jobs that facilitate more consumer debt creation, real estate agents, etc are not a measure of progress. Yet, these are the same jobs likely to be supported by the short-term interventionist policies like the stimulus checks, artificially low interest rates, government housing bailouts, and banking bailouts. These government policies may create a short-term illusion of action for the upcoming elections, but are in fact further mortgaging our future and rapidly eroding the purchasing power of savings that individuals have set aside for their future.