LETTER: The tedious campaign

Every election seems to rerun the same old scripts. The left always votes blue no matter who. The right wants accountability, but politicians always blame somebody else for the mess we are in. This year’s campaigns are no different.

The Trump administration is failing to recognize the global impact that a small country such as Iran can have. Yet, oil prices, like gas prices, are a commodity bought and sold in the free markets. If you are asking the government to manipulate a free market, you might as well live in China. Likewise, food prices are a function of available arable land, available water, reasonable property taxes and incentives and the cost of the middleman to ultimately put food in the grocery store.

Affordable housing is a paradoxical concept. Wages, again set in a free market, determine how much we can afford to spend. Material building costs are expensive worldwide. U.S. labor is expensive, and this compounds the problem. Likewise, land is not free and must come from somewhere — and, in many cases, developers buy out arable lands but, when they build, they set the rates as high as the free market allows. Again, if you want government to manipulate free markets, move to China.

Every election boils down to money, or more precisely, your money. Government money is taxpayer money, and the more we want for free or at reduced cost means the taxpayer has to subsidize the price. Politicians assume you don’t understand any of that and hope you vote with emotions, not common sense.