Dear Editor
The June 1 issue of the New-Optimist carried a letter that illustrates how a faulty premise can still result in an enlightened and true conclusion. Moe Brondum wrote (in "Pay now or pay more later") that, while government may be "the worst way humanity could have devised to spend money," somehow government spending on education is a good investment, and should be expanded.
Unfortunately, Mr. Brondum is not alone in the erroneous assumption that all government expenditures are unnecessarily costly.Still, ashe points out in the letter, this particular government expenditure is a cost-effective one in the long run. He seems to justify this departure from his idea of the norm by considering it to be an exception.
I could cite numerous examples of how many other government expenditures are more cost-effective as well as more humane than farming them out to the private sector, or of eliminating them entirely, and I could point out other examples of how large corporations waste and misuse their financial might. Of course, no human institution can be without fault, and governments are no exception, with some worse than others. Our system of medicare could be an example of both the good and the bad.
However, the point I wish to make now is how Mr. Brondum's letter is an example of how effective the several decades long campaign by those with right-wing, corporate-sponsored ideologies has been to engrain the spurious idea of "Government bad, business good." Like the animals in Animal Farm, many of us can be influenced to believe that kind of slogan if it is repeated often enough and with enough passion.
Russell Lahti
Battleford
