Free market is not socially responsible

Mr. Carver, writing in the July 30 Fence Post, seems to think the only group capable of advancing this country and the world is private enterprise. Would you say that the current recession is an example of this principle at work?

Would 1929 be another textbook case? Mr. Carver says 40 percent of Americans don't pay taxes. Has he ever thought about why they don't? There are two reasons actually. If you are a worker bee you simply don't earn enough to pay taxes. If you are well-to-do or a major corporation you have simply dodged all the taxes that the rest of us get to pay.

Mr. Carvers' message seems to be that government involvement in a project assures a disaster. Then he uses a Greenspan quote about the rich vs. rest of us separation gap growing wider, which is precisely what government programs are designed to do. He is not exactly correct when he says the free market produces the lowest price because of competition. In reality it produces the lowest cost, which is quite different. A lower price is incidental. Too often the free market reaches their 'efficiency' on the backs of the employees; layoffs, low wages, no insurance, no raises, eliminating pensions and contributions to 401k plans, etc.

If you exclude the few who are voluntarily uninsured, the balance are uninsured because of free enterprise. How else do you explain the owners or the board of directors of a firm having health insurance while their employees do not? Why are business organizations so upset with Walmart for supporting universal health care?

If the free market were socially responsible, there would be little need for government intervention. But they aren't. And intervention is needed.

James Prescott

Schaumburg