In Monday's Leader, columnist Walter Williams seemed to be making sense when describing what would happen if a group of cattlemen all grazed their cattle on the same grassland - they would ruin it. In fact, this is happening in Africa, where goats are grazed on free range, overgraze it and turn it into desert. He points out that this is happening in America as Congress overspends because the system works that way. It does, but he has the wrong culprit.
In Africa, the symbol of wealth is how many goats a farmer has, leading, in part, to the overgrazing. In order to be rich, a farmer has as many goats as he can accumulate. In better-educated America, this doesn't happen.
Here, the symbol of wealth is money, paper or the equivalent in stock certificates, paper or government bonds.
The goats have to be cared for just as the cattle would be by the owner or a hired person, requiring management, an expense.
Here in America, the owner of paper bonds or mortgages do not have to feed the paper instruments; they have to be fed more paper, called interest or dividends, by the debtor. Payment is continuous and cumulative.
The more the paper monsters are fed, the more they have to be fed because they are bigger and require more food, paper. Just as overloaded pasture turns to desert, our financial wizards are turning a healthy economy into a financial desert. All these smart financiers hire lawyers or lobbyists to keep the owners of the paper from having to feed their own animals. They have a system that keeps them from having to feed their own monster, in paper, called taxes.
Mr. Williams doesn't notice the welfare state is paying about $500 billion in interest to keep the paper monster growing. He is almost a genius. He notices the pasture is being overgrazed, but can't quite see the big animal that is doing it. He can't see that the bankers and the insurance giants are the welfare recipients. He didn't notice they faked the paperwork to produce foreclosure papers to steal the money that makes them rich.
Could this be welfare fraud?
JOHN BENDER
Johnstown