Two very different authors wrote to the Record-Bee, in their opinion, the present plight of our country”s economic problems is because of American business.
“Corporate America needs to rejoin the family that is the United States of America” and “? call it corporatocracy or fascism or the new world order. It”s the current system governing America. America, we”ve been sold out.”
Unquestionably, American business has a lot of faults and problems, but we the people have gone out of our way to permit, rather than limit their behavior. To deny that our problems stem from the habits and lifestyle preferences of the American consumers is just plain dumb.
As a people we are cheap, economically unpatriotic, unwilling to take action and/or sacrifice and much too willing to rack up debts with little intention of paying in the near future.
We feel strongly about our being an equal opportunity, free-enterprise, profit-driven and free-market economy. Too bad!
These traits are exactly the basis for our problems admit it or not. We built up our country”s lifestyle to an amazing level, but because we are so cheap, we”ve made that lifestyle unsustainable.
Jobs go overseas because the cost for the same product is less expensive. I have no doubt that America still has the capability to produce everything American consumers need. If we were willing to pay the price of American-made, the jobs would not have gone. But we aren”t.
Americans could, in protest, not buy things made overseas, but we don”t want to pay the extra even though it would help our economy.
If you consider unemployment compensation and welfare paid, the actual price of a lot of overseas goods rises dramatically.
Businesses are in business to make profits to please their investors. If they do not make use of every legal tool available they are not doing what they should.
The problem is not business or corporate America, it is the fact that in the effort to protect individual rights and minimize regulations and rules, the American populace has cut its own throat while making sure that it doesn”t indulge in socialism. But what can you expect from a population that places too high a value on human life so that food and medicine are provided for the indigent.
And then, of course, we bitch mightily about the cost. We moan about the state of the infrastructure and the deficits, but Lord help us we should increase taxes so we might break even one of these years.
Guthrie “Guff” Worth
Lakeport
