Friday, June 28, 2002
Poor corporate execs need to keep lavish lifestyle
EDITOR:
I read an article in The Vindicator on June 24: New agency aims "to keep bad guys out." The goal is to tightly control who and what comes into this country. A government expert calls it a "circle-the-wagons approach to homeland security." But the problem, he says, is that it doesn't deal with "upstream" issues such as "who's putting bad things into cargo containers in overseas ports."
I thought about this and came up with a really good idea. Let's stop bringing overseas containers into this country and start manufacturing products for the United States in the United States. This way people who buy these products in the United States, can work in the United States, build the products in the United States and purchase the products they build in the United States with the money they earned in the United States. What a concept.
Then reality set in. I realized what a stupid idea this really was. If we did this, big business would have to bring their factories back to the United States, hire people from the United States and pay fair wages as demanded by workers in the United States. This would never work.
Sure, the unemployment rate would drop, the standard of living for the average working family would rise, the United States would become strong and self sufficient again, but here's the problem. Big business executives would have to take huge pay cuts. Instead of presidents, vice presidents and CEO's living on $10 million a year, they would have to try to make ends meet with a mere $2 million. After living the lifestyle they've become accustomed to in the last 20 or so years, this would be like tossing these poor execs into poverty.
Let's face it: We're a country with too big of a heart to do this to these poor guys.
So let's just scrap that idea. The execs can continue to live the good life they're accustomed to. The average worker can continue to buy these imported products for top dollar and continue to live at or near the poverty level, and our government can continue to deal with whatever surprises those cargo containers continue to bring us.
BUTCH BAKER
Struthers
Real mothers don't leave their children in filth
EDITOR:
I am writing in response to the recent reports in the newspaper of mothers who have their children living in filth. You can- not believe how appalling this is to me. My husband and I had tried for several years to have children and until we went to the local infertility clinic, we traveled that road that is so unknown to so many.
To hear about these children and how they are living just completely leaves me sick. There are so many couples out there that do not have the luxury to have children and would have given any one of those children a home. These two women do not realize what a gift they have, and, please, don't tell me that they never wanted to have them live in those surroundings. They could have placed them with another family member sooner rather than having them taken away. They had roaches climbing on them, for heaven's sake.
I hope that these women and any other women out there who take their children for granted will wake up and smell the coffee.
You are truly blessed, and there are many couples that would give anything to be in your shoes as a parent. They should be punished to the full extent of the law and thenbe reaquired take parenting classes to regain custody of their children. They should be ashamed to call themselves mothers.
JENNIFER MILANO
Austintown