Vince Emmer, your golf metaphor for big government is a really, really sad attempt to dis big government. But columns have always been the work of a duffer.

First thing your metaphor misses is there is a par to each hole. You don't make us understand what constitutes under and over the balance line that would be consensus. What is the bogey or the hole in one, spending wise?

Next most golfers play 18 holes, and the game is much more about the back nine than the front end.

But of course your brand of economics never ventures onto the back nine, where the sand traps of wage slavery and rust-belt industry are negotiated only by Asian players.

Case in point, saying each household owes $56,000 a year is just a fear tactic. With the current tax structure, and the many ways government finances debt, nobody actually owes this. Instead we pay forward a portion of the earning (which the government is borrowing, interest free) plus various fees and taxes to local agency, where one chooses to be a member of the same civility. This would be the front nine.

The back nine is the fact that the structure of government is much the same as corporations, in that they are champions or duffers to the extent they can carry debt.

The ability to carry debt in capitalist societies keeps the operation under par even with forays into the woods like Afghanistan and Iraq, and breath test-qualified mortgage-backed securities, etc. If you equate the per-household equivalent in the corporate world, it would be the cost passed onto consumers, hidden fees and the fact banks are borrowing peoples savings at a rate as close to interest free as it can manage.

But of course, our current neo-liberal economist and business school caddies don't even know the difference between the putter and the driver in this matter. Face the fact governments are financed by more than one club and must always play the full round, while business can spin off debt into subsidiaries and spend their time in the clubhouse.

Eric Olander

Glenwood Springs

Continue reading here:

Letter: Par for the column - Glenwood Springs Post Independent