Sowell Rants Again

Thomas Sowell is at it again in his piece “Government Never Creates Wealth”. Conservatives in Redding must read this fool with great anticipation as he verifies a philosophy that has reduced this county to feudalism.

Of course Government can create wealth. Shasta County has many government employees in forestry, education and reclamation. These workers spend their paychecks in the local economy. Most local economic analysis, rank government as a vital part of the Shasta County Economy. As government has retracted due to the incredibly stupid tax cutting mania of the past thirty years, Shasta County has seen a vital part of their economic well being dwindle with disastrous results; a 40% poverty rate.

In fact, cuts in government lead to reductions in private sector jobs.

This is particularly the case today, with the global economy. The United States has followed a foolhardy policy allowing millions of jobs to be shipped overseas, and has done nothing to protect American labor. Many other countries in the world (including China and India) have protectionist governmental policies, tariffs , taxes on outsourcing, that protect their workers. The conservative free enterpriser, who believes that government has no role in an economy, has “conned” us into believing that we can stupidly send our work overseas, benefit with the lower prices of foreign laborers who are non-union and work for pennies a day, and still benefit our economy. We all troop to Wal-Mart to buy cheap T.V.s, sold by people making dirt cheap wages, while our neighborhood stores close and our friends go hungry.

Corporate America is no longer corporate America. Multi-national corporations are the norm today. They don’t care about Shasta County. They only care about making their products cheap, selling them cheap, and raking in the profits. And, a more scary trend is developing. American consumerism, that used to be essential to multi-nationals, is no longer as important. Chinese and Indian consumerism is quickly filling the void. In short, Mr. Sowell, your stupid economic philosophy has led the United States into a future as a second class economy, with a few very wealth C.E.O.s who head up multi-nationals and the rest of us poor and destitute. So let’s cut government, throw away Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, so our people have NOTHING!

Meanwhile conservatives like Sowell continue their nonsense to cut government help to the middle class, cut minimum wage, resist health care reform, making people lives even more miserable. It is not the politicians that got us into this mess, Mr. Sowell, is was fools like you who sold the farm for profit.