Another week, another dose of libertarian nonsense from frequent letter writer Ed Konecnik, who seems to think that freedoms are taken away by fair tax laws, welfare, food stamps and anything the government does to assist the folks who need a helping hand.
Recently, Konecnik longed for the days of our founding fathers and the “freedoms” we had then. Government meddling is the problem, he said. He wants to go back to when slavery was legal; child labor was the norm; women had virtually no rights, could not own property or vote and were now and then burned at the stake as witches because of superstition.
He complains about 10 million people being out of work today and of how many people are on food stamps. His reasoning is little or no government operating in a free market and getting rid of regulation is the answer to save our republic. “Atlas Shrugged” is a novel, Konecnik. It was fiction. It is not a real-life handbook for society.
We saw how well deregulation of Wall Street worked. Free to gamble, Wall Streeters played craps with our money and wrecked the economy. They even hedged their bets on our economic failure and made billions. For a while there, you could buy a house with no investment, job or assets. Meanwhile, bankers, corporations and the wealthy have more than $4 trillion stashed in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes. Trickle-down economics is a miserable failure.
So many people are on food stamps, Konecnik, because their jobs pay poverty wages. One in six working people have two or more jobs to provide for their families. More than 50,000 manufacturing companies have closed in the United States, most relocating overseas, because of unfettered free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and trade agreements with China.
Republican union-busting and right-to-work laws have added icing to the cake. In short, these agreements have decimated our economy and caused the collapse of the middle class that relied on good-paying jobs. The wealthy have flourished at the expense of the middle class. Charts confirming these facts are all over the Internet.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau report of 2012, Social Security kept 26 million seniors out of poverty. Food stamps kept another 5 million above the poverty level. The main cause of 10 million people falling into poverty was out-of-pocket healthcare expenses.
The Affordable Care Act is designed to give these folks healthcare coverage that will protect them from that fate and save us who pay for it billions. Fifty-two percent of the fast food workers rely on some form of subsidy to survive. A starting worker at Walmart cannot live on their own paycheck, even if they shop at Walmart.
Food stamps only amount to about $3 a day, but many low-wagers have to rely on them to buy a discounted package of spaghetti and some cheap tomato sauce to live. These folks do not want to live like that, but that is where circumstances find them.
Meanwhile, forces in Congress are working to dismantle the programs that keep so many people out of poverty. You want little or no government? Look at Somalia, where warlords ride around in armored vehicles and shoot and threaten people for power. Pirates roam the shipping lanes looking for cargo ships to seize for ransom money.
That is libertarian paradise, and most of us want no part of it.
Tyler Cassell
Flushing
