Blame wrongly placed

In a recent letter to the editor entitled "Safety becomes entanglement" the writer warned about generations who have, in his opinion, been trained to rely on the "entitlements" for food, shelter, medical care and more.

It is always interesting to me that folks who are concerned about the minuscule amount we give to individuals to provide a helping hand never fret about the large amounts that are given to corporations.

The federal government gives tax cuts to corporations who in turn pay no taxes on profits. CEO salaries in the U.S. are 500 times greater than the lowest paid employee in the organization, but what does the organization care? They got a tax write-off for CEO salaries.

The CEO ran the organization into bankruptcy and still walked away with over $100 million in severance pay plus pension and stocks -- all of which could be written off. Cities and states give incentives for freebies to the point that companies are just freeloading from one area to another and again in most cases paying little to zero local taxes. You want to worry about government giveaways, put your worry where the problem is.

The writer was correct about how we have "conditioned people to be less than they could be" -- only the "people" are not the poor, working class individuals. They are the people who own and run greedy corporations and the lame politicians who are too gutless to do anything about it.

GAYLE HENDRIX, Cape Girardeau