Come to the demand side
Business people know that you have to spend money to make money. The same is true for governments. The U.S. government cannot print money. The Fed can. We can borrow from the Fed by selling them 30-year bonds. The Fed can pay for the bonds with a keystroke to our account, creating money, and sell the bonds when they want to take money out of the economy to fight inflation if it becomes necessary.
Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz teach the same economics that I learned in 1966-67 at the U of A.
Demand-side and supply-side economics are two competing theories about how best to grow the economy (gross domestic product). Roosevelt grew the GDP by increasing demand. Reagan used supply-side economics and tripled the federal debt. Republicans like to keep taxes on the job-makers low, so they like supply. Democrats like demand. Stimulating demand is what gets us out of recessions and depressions. The Hoover administration tried supply, which helped result in the Great Depression. They should have tried demand.
Which theory should we try now? We’ve tried supply-side economics for the last 35 years, and the GDP has grown half as fast as in the years 1945-1980. It is time to stimulate demand in the economy. Donald Trump says the economy always does better under the Democrats. Raise taxes on the rich, lower taxes on workers, and borrow the money we need to invest in our people and infrastructure to increase demand. The debt may grow, but the GDP will grow faster, making the debt-to-GDP ratio decrease like it did from 1945 to 1980, and that’s what’s important, not the size of the debt!
RUUD DuVALL
Fayetteville
Fight discrimination
Re the equality issues going on in the U.S., it seems many different people are being segregated in many different ways and there is so much hate and bullying going on. An end needs to be put to this.
I am a student in high school, and going around campus and in hallways, there are people being bullied based on things like their gender or race. At least from the 1920s we’ve had to fight for our basic civil rights. We should be fighting to just end this war and for everybody to be equal. We are all the same—human beings—and we shouldn’t keep fighting each other based on what we are.
I’ve noticed that there is still much discrimination against African Americans and women in general. Many places won’t let African Americans do certain things. Women get paid less than men in many jobs and that needs to be fixed; being a certain gender has no effect on how the job is done or what the job is.
Many teenagers that are discriminated against or hated a lot of the time will commit suicide. We need to be more aware of what’s going on around us, and protect each other.
PEYTON SIKES
Bryant
Take 10 or leave them
Construction of the interstate highway system is often “credited” for the creation of the national Environmental Policy Act, as government officialdom ran roughshod over local concerns about preserving neighborhoods and otherwise protecting the human environment.
It seems we see that same institutional hubris exhibited in today’s I-30 Crossing project. Various individuals, elected officials, and groups have called for development of other alternatives in response to the project’s identified purpose and need. None has been developed for consideration, including the most logical one of simply adding an I-30 designation to I-440. Instead, the highway department has systematically excluded any action alternatives which do not provide for an “average peak hour transportation speed” in the year 2041 of at least 58 miles per hour from U.S. 67 to the southern end of the study area.
Why this “need for speed” during a future rush hour? Doesn’t everyone expect downtown area congestion during rush hour? Why is high-speed mobility through the corridor more important than anything else—even though the analysis shows only a small percentage of vehicles actually transiting the entire corridor? Did the department purposefully sandbag a viable alternative that doesn’t give justification for a 10-lane decision?
Establishing a 10-lane interstate through our downtown sets up the next “need” for even more lanes in the not-too-distant future as reduced congestion draws more traffic through the city’s heartland. How can the highway department actually plan for a finding of no significant impact on the human environment for a project which portends such a sweeping transformation of our downtown area?
DALE PEKAR
Little Rock
Pressure and cheating
I’m concerned that some students would rather cheat off one of their classmates to get an “easy A” than actually learn and work for their grade. It seems the school system values grades more than the students actually learning, and I believe it causes them to cheat.
I am a student at Bryant High School, and while I study to actually learn the subject and make good grades, I know many students who would rather cheat to make the grade. Because a good grade is all that matters, right? That’s all that colleges, teachers and parents look at. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the subject, but as long as you have a good grade then you are considered okay, but in reality you aren’t.
I believe that understanding the subject is more important than an A in any class. If people would stop valuing grades and put more value on whether the student is trying to understand what the teacher is teaching, it would benefit the students more.
Because I am a student, I know how hard it can be to study and make a good grade in seven different classes, and sometimes cheating is the easy way out. The school and parents should stop pressuring the students about their grades; then maybe our students would try more and cheat less.
HANNAH C. BREWER
Bryant
Ready for real world
I’d like to address the parents that come to the rescue of their children who leave something they need for school at home. Whether it be an important essay, or tennis shoes, don’t bring it to them.
I’m a student at Bryant High School and many of my friends call their parents asking for them to bring something to them because they forgot. Over-parenting has the potential to undermine children’s personal confidence and robs them of the perseverance they’ll need in the real world after they’ve left the safe walls of home.
Studies have shown that the ability to recover from adversity is crucial for later benchmarks of success. Research shows that “grit”—or perseverance—was a stronger predictor of completing high school, making the final rounds of the National Spelling Bee, completing the Army Special Operations Forces selection course, or staying married than intelligence scores or physical aptitude.
“Kids who are allowed to fail and face the consequences of their failures learn how to rebound, regroup, and adapt, taking the good stuff from the experience forward with them, while leaving behind the parts that don’t work,” said Jessica Lahey, author of The Gift of Failure. She acknowledges that failure can seem scary to parents, but it doesn’t have to. “When we rescue our kids from consequences … [it] can result in dependent … kids who never learn how to adapt to the world around them.”
Parents need to help their children by letting them be more independent so they can get ready for the real world away from home.
EMILY SULLIVAN
Alexander
Thank you ... however
As a long-retired, admittedly very conservative peace officer, I thank you for your editorial, “Ready, aim … cease fire.” Hopefully it will help some of the knee-jerk responders (including me at times) reconsider their position on at least some aspects of Obama’s latest plan. Your editorial offers several good points I think most conservatives (especially peace officers) will agree with, in particular those regarding mental health issues.
The one thing I find absolutely repellent is what seems to be Barack Obama’s unilateral decision to blatantly ignore our elected representatives (again) and impose his personal edict on our nation (again). The man is absolutely shameless in his disregard for Congress and the citizens he was elected to serve. I think this is the very thing, this intense lack of trust, that prompts so many virtually automatic objections (knee-jerk?) to his “presidential decrees” … regardless of merit or real value.
My reason for objecting to his demand for licensing informal gun sellers and documenting purchases is simple. I do not trust our government and absolutely do not want “them” to know anything about any weapons I own. And no, I don’t hoard firearms, unless a couple of old handguns and even older rifle make me one. Like many, I’m seriously concerned that “our” government might someday pass a law for confiscating firearms.
As for your line, “And if he does ever go too far, that’s what the judicial branch is for,” I shouldn’t have to point out that, for many of us, one of our greatest fears is the long-term disaster our nation could experience if the next president manages to fill the next few Supreme Court vacancies with liberal justices. The long-range effects of that could be devastating.
DAVID L. HUDIBURGH
Garfield
Answer to problems
Re all the negative things like the attack on Paris, ISIS beheading people, and the incident in California: I believe all this conflict in the world is taking away from the good that it could be. Although I am young, I can see how terrible these things are.
I believe there is one simple answer to all of these problems. That answer is God. So many people will judge a person for saying that and that’s totally okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinions so I hope that people can respect mine. People argue that there’s no proof of a God and without a close relationship with him I guess they’re right. Besides the Bible and the stories of how the world started, we only have faith, but I believe this faith is strong enough to cover all other possibilities.
Most everybody is familiar with the popular verse which starts with “For God so loved the world.” I believe God loves every one of us, even the people that are doing the horrible things. We’re constantly reminded to love like Jesus loved and I believe that can really make a difference. The Bible says “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
The people that commit these mean actions don’t deserve to be loved, but neither do we. If we can learn to forgive and love others, maybe something can be done.
KARLEE KINDY
Benton
Feedback
But that’s the point
Mr. Paul Christ, in his recent letter, probably thought he was ridiculing people of faith when he remarked that when someone prays they “believe that she or he can exert influence over situations and events beyond their control.”
I would go further and point out that that is the whole point of prayer. It’s sort of the religious equivalent of an intellectual atheist writing a letter to the editor.
WILLIAM MALLETT
Garfield
Reconsidered vote
I may have to reconsider my presidential primary vote. In support of Hillary Clinton, I’ll become a Democrat again.
I believe Bernie Sanders cannot win a national presidential election. Democrats need Hillary.
NEALUS WHEELER
Mountain Home