Good Wages
August 27, 2008 · Updated 8:05 PM
Those governments who profess to be concerned about our potential slippage into a Bush recession should take heed of the words of one of our earliest industrial tycoons. Nearly 100 years ago Henry Ford wrote, an unemployed man is an out-of-work customer. He cannot buy. An underpaid man is a customer reduced in purchasing power. He cannot buy. Business depression is caused by weakened purchasing power. The cure of business depression is purchasing power and the source of purchasing power is wages.
Those CEOs and financial planners who have been improving their balance sheet exorbitant salary increases at the same time by sending good American jobs to China, India, Mexico, etc., have been also edging our country into recession and our dollar into free fall.
Notice Ford did not say the rich needed lower taxes to help the economy flourish. He emphasized that working Americans needed good jobs at good wages in order to spend and keep the country on an even keel. This vital lesson seems to have been forgotten or ignored by those running corporate America and our government today.
Benita Helseth
Lake Stevens
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