ransvestia

Well this is not intended to be a commentary on our political- economic system, but those factors I've mentioned come home to roost pretty quickly. We all know that prices are going up, people have less to spend, they don't buy automobiles and houses like they used to, as a result the auto makers lay off thousands of men. The housing industry does likewise. This means less need for steel and other products that go into cars and houses so the companies supplying them lay men off, too. All these laid off workers live for a time on unemployment checks, pensions or federally-paid jobs. In any case their purchasing power is cut so they don't buy as much and that lays more men off and on and on it goes.

Even if you are not one of those laid off or you own your own business, or you are retired or whatever, you are affected like everyone else so you'd better think about it. When this same thing happened in 1929-35 we had long bread lines and men stood on street corners selling apples to earn a few pennies. It was tough but we came out of it. How? Largely because of Hitler's rise in Germany and the necessity to first re-arm and later to fight a war. That always brings full employment, fat paychecks and prosperity except for those who die in the struggle. We have just finished our period of "prosperity" due to the Viet Nam conflict, but we also poured uncounted billions of our money, labor, and resources into that rat hole to say nothing of the lives. And it was a rat hole because it gained us absolutely nothing valuable. Now we have depression and unemployment and rising cost of living. But there is something different from the 1929-35 period. Now we have lived through Viet Nam, Watts, Detroit, Baltimore, Jersey City and other places and times. Our people know and unders- tand violence because they have had a lot of practice. No longer will people be content to stand on street corners and sell apples. If their kids are starving they will go out and TAKE what they need and they have the guns and ammunition to stop those who get in their way.

Official figures put unemployment at about 7.5 percent but that counts people who were employed and have been laid off. It does not count those who have been out of work for so long that they no longer appear on the unemployment insurance rolls; the young people who have never had a job and so never got into the job census in the first place; the old people long out of the count, the sick, crippled, bedridden, etc. We doubtless have more than 15 percent of the people in this country not only unemployed personally but with no other employed person bringing home the bacon . . . or the grits. On top of that it is rising. Just how long do you think unemployment insurance