Bullock Texas State History Museum
Class Differences Not the Problem
RECEIVED Mon., Nov. 21, 2011
Dear Editor,
In the Nov. 11 "Page Two," you insinuated that Mexico's and Latin America's problems result from inequality, totally reassigning the cause for the effect. These countries are in the economic state that they are in and suffer the inequality that they do because they have limited rule of law and they have governments who run their economies by handing out favors to preferred recipients. Maybe you are making this point in a roundabout way and implying that we cannot continue on with our system of crony-ism (I do not use the term crony capitalism because it is a contradictory term), in which case I agree we should not. However, corporate greed is not the cause, as corporations are comprised of people and people are inherently self-interested (including me, you, every politician, etc.), and I do not expect or wish this to change any time soon. The problem is that the people and the courts have ceded the power to politicians to grant favors and write laws that restrict the many on behalf of the few. So the only logical answer is less power given to government to dole out favors, not more. This seems to be the opposite of what you are suggesting in your column from last week. Unless you think that Democrats are less prone to this behavior than Republicans, in which case I would encourage you to re-examine your faith in team blue (same goes for team red apologists).
In the Nov. 11 "Page Two," you insinuated that Mexico's and Latin America's problems result from inequality, totally reassigning the cause for the effect. These countries are in the economic state that they are in and suffer the inequality that they do because they have limited rule of law and they have governments who run their economies by handing out favors to preferred recipients. Maybe you are making this point in a roundabout way and implying that we cannot continue on with our system of crony-ism (I do not use the term crony capitalism because it is a contradictory term), in which case I agree we should not. However, corporate greed is not the cause, as corporations are comprised of people and people are inherently self-interested (including me, you, every politician, etc.), and I do not expect or wish this to change any time soon. The problem is that the people and the courts have ceded the power to politicians to grant favors and write laws that restrict the many on behalf of the few. So the only logical answer is less power given to government to dole out favors, not more. This seems to be the opposite of what you are suggesting in your column from last week. Unless you think that Democrats are less prone to this behavior than Republicans, in which case I would encourage you to re-examine your faith in team blue (same goes for team red apologists).
Adam Johnson
