Dear Editor:
Today Associated Press reported an
”
unexpected
”
rise in unemployment rate. Unexpected by whom, I don’t know.
Dear Editor:
Today Associated Press reported an “unexpected” rise in unemployment rate. Unexpected by whom, I don’t know. (Look at how skimpy the Help Wanted sections of the newspapers are, or take a drive to Sunnyvale, Redwood Shores, or Santa Clara if you want ta real jolt – building after building sitting empty) According to the report, unemployment is over 6 percent nationally, which means that it’s at the highest rate in nine years.
High-tech workers in Silicon Valley are enjoying this “prosperity” at a much higher, 20 percent-plus unemployment rate, which is expected to go a little higher. What’s the president doing about this? Zip. He’s busy planning a war that will cost us between $100 Billion and $200 billion. He likes to say that one of his role models is Ronald Reagan, but it seems he’ll probably be remembered more like another famous Republican president of yesteryear, Herbert Hoover, who led us into the Great Depression. The difference, of course, is that Bush is hell-bent on war while Hoover was a Quaker who was appalled at the human costs of war; he actually worked to help refugees and distribute food to the poor in countries that were ravaged by World War I.
The biggest similarity between Bush and Hoover? Letting the economy erode so badly before doing something about it. After the stock market crash of 1929, Hoover refused to fully mobilize the resources of the federal government to save the collapsing economy. What actions he did take, such as approving creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932 to loan funds to ailing corporations, were obviously too little too late. He feared that too much government intervention would “destroy the integrity and initiative of the individual citizen.”
I guess that standing in line at soup kitchens or milling about in front of closed businesses was a better way to keep people’s integrity intact.
So, let’s see if unemployment “unexpectedly” goes to 6.5 percent or 7 percent in a couple of months, as our president continues to not address the ongoing decline in our economy.
Tom Mulhern, Gilroy
Submitted Friday, Dec. 6 to ed****@ga****.com