I read with interest and respect, as always, Wilfred Bartlett's letter to The Telegram, June 22.
Awash with seafaring metaphors, he castigates the provincial government for spending money in short supply on keeping the economy alive with assistance provided to home repair, silviculture and other areas of enterprise.
I get the idea of when in a hole stop digging. It's counter intuitive to do otherwise.
Yet the opposite of what is the norm often works.
Like speeding up rather than slowing down when going into a curve.
This was so when Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal socialistic measures greatly helped lift the U.S. (and the world) out of the Great Depression as did spending during the 2008 recession.
Economists and policy makers know that once businesses fail they often don't make a comeback.
To use a health metaphor, once the patient goes off life support no further interventions will likely bring them back to life.
A lot of businesses and individuals throughout the world are now plugged in to government controlled respirators trying to keep economic patients alive.
"Shut her down" philosophies remind me of my grandmother's tale of a young Newfoundland couple frowned upon for courting during hard times with the admonition "poor time for kissing, no fish! "
Call me naive, but sometimes all one has to go on is yearning, faith and knowing that someone is in your corner.
Tom Hawco,
St. John's
