To the Editor:
I realize tough economic times have many of us looking for answers, but Dick Hagen’s recent opinion piece troubled me (“Bumps on the road to liberty,” The Land, March 5/12).
Hagen worries about our “slide into socialism,” and thinks most Americans don’t care about the “political process” unless they “believe they are entitled to the handouts of government regardless of whether they work, or don’t work.”
Now, I couldn’t help but wonder if Hagen includes the phenomenon of the Tea Party folks in this assessment. Do they want handouts? I don’t know, but personally, I admit that I have taken hundreds of thousands of government handout dollars from various farm programs.
Of course, I didn’t have to hoover up all these taxpayer dollars, but if I wouldn’t have taken them I would have been unable to compete with other farmers who also suckled this taxpayer motherlode.
We farmers and our lobbyists have often made it quite clear to our legislators that socialism and its accompanying federal dollars are essential to our well-being. In fact, socialism has long been essential in the American way of life. Most government socialism is aimed at corporations and the wealthy. On top of that, corporate pollution is generally socialized onto taxpayers.
Our 700 foreign military bases are mostly there to protect American corporate interests. Lots of costs are “socialized” onto the average taxpayer.
Finally, Hagen arrives at his “bigger concern,” which is the “burden of national debt.” While I share his concern on this, our nation’s debt as a percent of Gross Domestic Product is not as bad as it was after World War II and is not as bad as has been the case of many advanced nations around the world.
At this time, government job creation increases wealth and stimulates demand, and demand is what is in short supply in our economy. Military spending and Medicare/Medicaid are our two biggest budget items, and must be addressed, either with cuts or tax increases.
It’s true that our government is increasingly dysfunctional. The recent Supreme Court decision, by five Republican-appointed judges, allowing even more corporate funding of our political system is disheartening. We allow a single U.S. senator to shut down normal government business. The Democrat majority can’t seem to get much accomplished, while Republicans seem to want nothing good to happen, since they see better chances for their party if our nation is doing poorly.
Life is becoming more complicated. Americans have always been good at meeting challenges. I hope we still are.
Greg Rendahl
Ostrander
