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July 30, 2010

Big government, business feed off each other

Regarding Gordon L. Weil’s column of July 15, “Should government spend more or less to beat recession?”

Aren’t taxes spent more on the private business area than on individuals? Agriculture is heavily subsidized by taxes (i.e., government), as are roads (Cianchette), bridges (Reed & Reed), airports (United, Delta), shipping ports, weapons manufacturing (Boeing, Raytheon); indeed, every area of commerce receives government funding. Its complexity is a three-dimensional sprawl.

An example of this government/private enterprise is the development of Medicare the social insurance program administered by the United States government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over. Insurance companies were going to drop coverage of this group of people because they (insurance firms) no longer wanted to carry them as it cost too much.

They asked the government to step in, and now we have Medicare. Big business and big government feed off one another. I wonder what shape would the economy take if, instead of giving bailouts to banks and other businesses, the government gave $1 million to each individual U.S. citizen from the age of 18 up. That would be a stimulus of less  than $307 million based on the total population as of July 2009. The war in Iraq cost $720 million per day as of 2007.





Robert Sezak, Proprietor


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