Robert Kerr’s Nov. 25 letter “Democrats twist facts to fit agenda” is not Economics 101 as he claims, it’s only 50½. He is right in writing that businesses that produce goods and services are necessary to the health of the economy. He is wrong in not recognizing that workers and consumers are equally necessary. It’s a partnership. You make it. I’ll buy it. But you have to pay me a salary for my work so that I can afford to buy it. Henry Ford recognized that simple fact and gave his employees a raise so that they could buy a Ford.
And President Barack Obama didn’t say that people who built companies didn’t really build them. He said that they didn’t build them alone. It takes a community to build a business. You need roads and bridges, police and fire protection, workers and consumers, laws and government. If you do Internet marketing, you need the Internet. Amazon and Google didn’t build the Internet. The government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency did that, without which Amazon and Google would not exist. Nor would they exist without employees and consumers. The benefit is reciprocal.
And, true, unions didn’t create jobs. Industries did. What unions created was the middle class, without which we’re not even at Economics 50½. We’re at Medieval Economics, owners and serfs.
Joel Littauer
Vancouver
