To the Editor,
What’s a trillion dollars?
Well, admittedly, one could get writer’s cramp from printing out all the zeros involved but one can ask: “What is the significance of a trillion dollars?”
The last figure I heard on the U.S. debt was $25 to $28 trillion dollars. Now, that was before the Donald Trump trillions that went to Wall Street or the Joe Biden $1.9 trillion from which the “peasants” got a few dollars thrown their way. Now, the Biden administration is proposing another one or two trillion dollar programs for infrastructure and simply advancing American society into the 21st century.
What’s a trillion or two here and there?
Now, Canada doesn’t have the “What are you going to do about it” option that the U.S.A. has. Everyone knows that if the U.S. economy “goes down,” everyone goes down, even the Chinese who are said to own a great chunk of American debt.
Right from the “roaring twenties” and “dirty thirties” to the Wall Street crash of 2008-09, the U.S. economy is in trouble. It spreads across the globe!
There are some solutions.
Let the economy stumble on, as they did in the 30s, dole out $1.80 a month — bad to give the peasants anything, but this is what legitimized both Communism and Fascism, not a good idea.
Then,as was done in 2007-08, give all the millions and billions to Wall Street to support the economy. That doesn’t work either. Well, it does leave room for tax breaks for the needy rich and huge cuts in education, health care, for the rest of us.
And look at the unrest that has raised it’s ugly head in Colombia where a right-wing government using the usual tax cut to brighten up the economy. Colombian citizens know they’ll be the ones to pay. Perhaps under the circumstances a trillion dollars of debt doesn’t look too bad.
Dennis Peacock,
Clearwater, B.C.