Editor,
After reading Terry Clayton’s letter, Whidbey News-Times, December 21, 2022, it appears the greedy, wealthy Republicans are the cause of what is wrong with America. “The pandemic drew people out of the workforce and caused an awakening of how badly the working class is exploited for greed that affects their health, family life, and quality of life.” If people aren’t working how does that make their health, family life and quality of life better?
Missing in Clayton’s letter is the system we operate under and that is capitalism, an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. Profit is reward for incentive, ingenuity, foresight, industriousness, investment, and can provide better health, family life and quality of lives, unlike socialism and communism, which stifles all the foregoing so everybody is equal and with the government elite directing everything.
Not everyone reaches adulthood under the same circumstances. Some excel in different ways, some do not, or care not to. Those that do, many succeed, invest, and bring those of lesser abilities and neophytes into the fold by creating businesses, jobs, a means to earn a living, benefits, including health care, and a path to progress to better opportunities. The taxes on these businesses and workers, including the wealthy, pay for the myriad federal, state and local government services that benefit everybody. The Republican Party has always been for business, opportunity, success, law and order, secure borders and smaller government. Terry Clayton associates wealth with greed instead of success.
The Democrat party, on the other hand, is what is wrong with America. It tends to expand government, intrudes in everyone’s lives, controls and stifles business and society with excessive regulation, taxation, uncontrolled spending (the recent 1.7 trillion Omnibus Bill), ignores laws, divides the country by race, means, sex, ideology, hatred, and promotes socialistic and welfare tendencies. It caters to those who pay little into the system and those reap benefits Democrats provide at working taxpayer expense. How is that, using Democrat-provided government benefits, not exploiting those of lesser means to garner votes to keep themselves in power?
Lastly, unelected bureaucrats, as Clayton seems to think will uphold democratic standards, is a myth. We already have too many unelected bureaucrats in our government, and that is a big part of the problem with our government. They are entrenched, do as they please, and we cannot oust them. America has always been the “Land of Opportunity” because of our capitalist system. Why else are we being flooded with immigrants who lived under other government systems and reject those for ours. Republicans and private wealth are NOT the problem.
Ed Hickey
Oak Harbor
