My response follows this atimes.com letter:
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I have being reading your website articles with very much interest for about a year, I have read one-sided stories and also well-balanced down-to-earth articles, but I have not really seen anything written on the real implications of the "war on terrorism". For one, let me make you aware of what is happening in the US. Slowly the economy is picking up thanks to the need to keep our troops supplied, small manufacturers are getting government contracts with secrecy clauses as well as the big companies. The more the destruction, and success of the "insurgents", the more the need to replenish the resources the army needs. It might be immoral to exchange blood for money, but I think this is a point that somebody has to make. As seen by this way of looking at things as they parallel American reality, it is absolutely absurd and pointless to think that the coalition troops will withdraw - why should they? Sure there are casualties, but in the long run those "terrorists" with their high ideals will keep the economy going for a long time. For that the economic establishment thanks them, and the super-rich are probably praying that the "terrorists" succeed in causing a major catastrophe on US soil so that they can have even greater power. It seems that those poor misguided souls dying for their "cause" or jihad are truly playing into the plans of the master economists that control their country and ours. May God have mercy on us all.
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Turulato
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Re: letter-writer Turulato’s popular left-wing theory of economics, as contained herein: “Slowly the economy is picking up thanks to the need to keep our troops supplied, small manufacturers are getting government contracts with secrecy clauses as well as the big companies… in the long run those "terrorists" with their high ideals will keep the economy going for a long time.”
Turulato goes on, in so many words, to lay out the following tempting scenario: the US government pays businesses to manufacture widgets, with both businesses and government benefiting. So the government pays businesses to manufacture more widgets, with more benefits accruing to both. This goes on and on, with a steadily growing pie fitting more and more fingers. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Gosh!
Except that this is just another perpetual motion machine to go alongside global warming, pyramid schemes, and each year’s new & improved world-destroying epidemic. So where do government revenues come from? Governments don’t earn money (nor can they just print it like funny money without generating massive inflation); they take it in a process called taxation (some would say they often steal it: both federal and state income tax in the US is unconstitutional, ergo the millions of US tax protesters who don’t pay state and/or federal income tax). Since the US government derives most of its money via taxes from businesses, how (in accordance with Turulato’s scenario) can businesses grow fat on government contracts when the money for these contracts is the tax drawn from their own profits? The amount of money remaining shrinks drastically with each iteration.
And who is the “business establishment?” How many sinister characters in this nebulous conspiracy has Turulato met in person? When I wanted to understand politics, I volunteered in a politician’s office. I suggest Turulato might try something similar in the economic sphere. It’s easy to do. If you really care about the subject, you will.
Biff Cappuccino, Taipei
Turulato goes on, in so many words, to lay out the following tempting scenario: the US government pays businesses to manufacture widgets, with both businesses and government benefiting. So the government pays businesses to manufacture more widgets, with more benefits accruing to both. This goes on and on, with a steadily growing pie fitting more and more fingers. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Gosh!
Except that this is just another perpetual motion machine to go alongside global warming, pyramid schemes, and each year’s new & improved world-destroying epidemic. So where do government revenues come from? Governments don’t earn money (nor can they just print it like funny money without generating massive inflation); they take it in a process called taxation (some would say they often steal it: both federal and state income tax in the US is unconstitutional, ergo the millions of US tax protesters who don’t pay state and/or federal income tax). Since the US government derives most of its money via taxes from businesses, how (in accordance with Turulato’s scenario) can businesses grow fat on government contracts when the money for these contracts is the tax drawn from their own profits? The amount of money remaining shrinks drastically with each iteration.
And who is the “business establishment?” How many sinister characters in this nebulous conspiracy has Turulato met in person? When I wanted to understand politics, I volunteered in a politician’s office. I suggest Turulato might try something similar in the economic sphere. It’s easy to do. If you really care about the subject, you will.
Biff Cappuccino, Taipei
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