Blogger Beer: The Return of The Eight-Ball Award!

Ah, I decided to read the Appleton Post Crescent (online) and one of the letters to the editor shows a glaring lack of economic understanding.

Doesn't Understand Quite a Bit.

Letters: Times have changed, as has government

Mr. Destiche (Letters, Jan. 31), to answer your question:

When your grandmother was young, jobs weren't outsourced to China so that people had to go to college just to get a job. Farmers weren't fighting with megafarms just to try to earn their keep, and seniors weren't paying outrageous amounts for drugs because the makers were only concerned about profit.

Well, when Mr. Destiche's grandmother was young China was in the throes of war and conflict (civil and otherwise). China at that time had nothing to offer the rest of the world. Now China has cheap labor.

Megafarms? Agricultural products are commodities the only chance to make money (i.e. a living) at it is to increase the output in one of two ways. Squeezing more out of the land and animals or increasing the amount of land or animals one works with (i.e. growing into a megafarm).

The drug companies are concerned about profits, why should they not be? They also have limited time to make money off of drugs they patent and I would guess much money goes into dead end drugs, that is drugs that never make it to market.

If you look back to the Great Depression, you will also find that the government created jobs (TVA), helped seniors afford to live (Social Security Act) and gave people money with which to live (unemployment).

There were some big differences between the nation now and then. One of them was the number of people paying into Social Security. BTW, is the implication here that the government now-a-days doesn't pay out social security?

The govt. created jobs here, jobs there but the govt would not be able to employ the entire nation.

We currently have a government that's trying to take all those things away. They're reducing student loans, but yet want kids to go to college to get a good job. They're raising drug prices while trying to cut Social Security. [emphasis added] They're trying to get rid of help for farmers, but they won't give them good prices for their product.

We live in a different time than your grandmother, but we have a different government, too.

Bill Schwalbach, Oshkosh

Here is where Mr. Schwalbach earns the coveted Eight-Ball award. How does the government raise drug prices? Oh, by allowing outrageous settlements on class action suits, that is by allowing the transfer of money from the drug companies to the lawyers.

Cutting social security? You had better explain yourself Mr. Schwalbach I know of no such effort.

The last line is funny to. Yes, welfare for farmers is being cut but who gives them the prices? Surely it isn't the government that buys all the produce from the farmers, it isn't the government that sets the buy price for a farmer's produce.

I am really upset the government didn't help the blacksmiths! We have an entire industry that disappeared, our government should have setup a program for the blacksmiths.