Letters policy: Send by e-mail to letters@gainesvilletimes.com (no attached files, please, which can contain viruses); fax to 770-532-0457; mail to The Times, P.O. Box 838, Gainesville, GA 30503; or click here for a form. Include full name, hometown and phone number for confirmation. They should be limited to one topic on issues of public interest and may be edited for content and length (limit of 500 words). Letters originating from other sources, those involving personal, business or legal disputes, poetry, expressions of faith or memorial tributes may be rejected. You may be limited to one letter per month, two on a single topic. Submitted items may be published in print, electronic or other forms. Letters, columns and cartoons express the opinions of the authors and not of The Times editorial board.
How did we get into this recession in the first place?
1. Unlimited access to liability claims by anyone against any business.
2. Economists and government believe manufacturing could go offshore to cheaper labor markets and we could become a service industry labor market.
3. The stock market has become a high-stakes gambling industry based on quarterly business financials instead of long term plans and dividend return on investment.
This required financial people to run large companies to make sure quarterly financials met their goals or exceeded them to keep stock value growth at the expense of reinvestment and long term plans.
4. Bank lenders became money salesmen with their income determined by how much money they could lend.
5. Young families with no idea about finances.
6. An economy based on installment buying with no government oversight. We have successfully saturated our markets with too many homes, cars, televisions, etc.
Also, we have the most expensive health care system in the world, which is also very good, but probably 30 percent of our population cannot afford the insurance because they are unemployed or underemployed.
For many years now middle class families have become a smaller portion of the population. We have allowed our two political parties to be controlled by extremists on both the right and the left. They have quit working together and are only interested in their party objectives and not the countries.
Our two-party system is broken and in need of fixing. Neither party nor any of us individually has all the answers. We need to work together to solve these problems. Is this an impossible task?
Paul Jones
Hoschton