facebook-pixel

Letter of the Week: Free enterprise needs real accounting

FILE - In this July 6, 2017, file photo, the Longview Power Plant in Maidsville, W.Va. The House voted July 18, 2017, to pass a Republican-backed bill delaying implementation of Obama-era reductions in smog-causing air pollutants. Congress voted 229 to 199 to approve the Ozone Standards Implementation Act of 2017. The measure delays by another eight years implementation of 2015 air pollution standards issued by the Environmental Protection Agency under the prior administration.(AP Photo/Michael Virtanen, File)

Some choices available to America:

Another increase in welfare we will call defense spending and tax cuts.

Price carbon emissions and renewable energy becomes the next big thing.

Picture two businesses. Business A produces a product whose waste byproducts get tossed into the public reservoir at lower price compared to Business B, which doesn’t pollute the public reservoir. Also, business A owns 2.5 of the three branches of government and pollution is the big free lunch they’re handing out for free.

Business A argues that free enterprise will collapse without the fiction that its wastes have no costs. Actually, the opposite is true. Free enterprise absolutely rests on a foundation of costs being known and accounted for. What throws sand into the gears of an economy is phony accounting employed to hide costs.

Our economy, our politics and unity as a nation are going through a rough period precisely because our economy has been utterly captured and enslaved by Business A.

Business B does not need public welfare. Business B needs the massive public welfare shoveled out to business A to end.

Charles Ashurst

Logan