Letter to the Editor

'Land of the Free' is slipping away

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

To the Editor:

Over the last few decades we have witnessed the loss of our country's manufacturing base!

Companies have felt the increased cost to do business in our country has increased to the point that they feel it is cheaper to manufacture overseas and pay the cost of transportation to ship the products back here for sale. When you make purchases, look where the product is made.

All this means that the overhead costs (labor costs, taxes, benefits, etc.) normally paid by the manufacturing companies is now shifted to those businesses left behind.

The largest business entity still remaining is the medical community. Medical services support individuals from birth to end of life. Unlike manufactured products, most of the medical services can not be transferred overseas.

As a result, the health care industry, and others, must include higher level of taxes to make up for those lost, from manufacturing that is no longer here.

For example, closer to home, two families are living in house and are sharing the overhead costs of rent, heating and air conditioning.

One family leaves, the remaining family has to pay the whole shot for the rent, heating and air conditioning. Their costs increase.

If the government takes over the healthcare Industry its cost becomes part of the overhead that must be made up by increasing taxes on those who are left.

We wind up with more people taking from the economy than you have left to produce it!

In essence, our country becomes a Madoff situation, only on a much larger scale. Or to put it another way, the Government is a Ponzi scheme, more taking from the top than are supporting from the bottom.

The apparent purposes of the Bill proposed by Congress will result in our losing the very freedoms our forebears fought to give us.

The long term result, as designed, will be the limiting of cost by reduced services to the younger generations and eliminating those individuals whose medical costs become substantial with age.

Years ago someone wrote a song called "Slipping Away." The lyrics are, "I feel it slipping. I feel it slipping. Everything is slipping away."

The Land of the Free is beginning to slip away.

Richard Taylor

Greencastle