—It's Insane!DFO 15937/2/83

1. IT'S PITIFUL WHEN YOU THINK OF ALL THESE POOR PEASANTS & STARVING PEOPLE, & WHAT THE U.S. SPENDS ON JUST THEIR WAR PREPARATIONS etc. I think I put it in a Letter once‚ that if the U.S. had taken all that money it spent on the Vietnamese war, billions of dollars, if they had just given that money to those Vietnamese people, it would have given everybody in Vietnam enough money to live on for the rest of their lives! They could have sooner bought the people off if they'd been smart! They could've bought'm off! They could've told all those Viet Cong & whatnot‚ "We'll pay you so much money & you can just go back & live a life of ease if you'll just quit!" I mean, every man, woman & child in all South Vietnam, it would have supported them for the rest of their lives, & then some, just what the U.S. government spent on war there!

2. THE AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY IN VIETNAM AT THAT TIME WAS ABOUT 40 YEARS EACH, & what the U.S. spends in one year is amazing, just think‚ on the new military budget alone, wasn't it about 200 billion dollars for this coming year? Pretty soon they'll have it up to 365 & that's about a billion dollars a day! Think what that could do for these poor people in most of these countries! It's insanity, absolute insanity what they spend just on the military alone! That's enough to give everybody in the Third World $100 a year—their average income!

3. AND THE TOTAL U.S. BUDGET IS GETTING UP TOWARD ONE TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR! Just think, I can remember as I recall when I was a boy first in school, the total national budget was only somewhere around a few million dollars a year.—For two reasons of course: For one thing, the government wasn't spending so much money; & another reason, the dollar was worth about ten times as much. Somebody might be able to look that up in an almanac & see what the Federal budget was 60 years ago.

4. IF THE WEST WOULD SPEND AS MUCH MONEY ON THE POOR OF THE WORLD AS THEY SPEND ON ARMS, IT WOULD SOLVE ALL THE WORLD'S POVERTY PROBLEMS! There wouldn't be any poor! They could support the whole World & every poor peasant in the World on just what the U.S. spends on arms alone—besides its extravagant budget for the national government! It's ridiculous! Just ridiculous! It's insane!

5. FOR EXAMPLE THE AVERAGE PER CAPITA INCOME PER YEAR IN THESE POOR COUNTRIES RANGES ANYWHERE FROM SOMETIMES ONLY $100 PER PERSON up to $300 & $400. $500 is considered almost out of the poverty level! Take the World population of somewhere around three billion—they're claiming four billion but they don't know yet, actually it doesn't look like it's run much over the three billion mark yet—but let's say it was three billion. If you wanted to pay everybody in every poor country in the World, let's start with $100 a year, which is the average in a lot of poor countries.—All you'd have to have is $300 billion to give every man, woman & child on Earth their $100 a year! Well‚ rule out the rich countries—if you'd add'm all together there's hardly even one billion, but two billion or more poor in the East & the South—so let's give'm $200 a year, that's really a pretty good income for most of the Third World! What would you have? Two billion people at $200 a year, you'd have 400 billion—half of the U.S. annual national budget of over 900 billion dollars!

6. JUST THINK‚ IF THEY EVEN SPEND THE 200 BILLION DOLLARS THAT THEY'RE PLANNING TO SPEND ON ARMS ALONE IN ONE YEAR‚ not counting what they've already spent but just 200 billion, that would give every Third World person in the poor Third World $100 for the year, which is about all a lot of them earn!—Just what the U.S. spends on arms alone!

7. DON'T YOU THINK GOD'S GOING TO HOLD THE U.S. ACCOUNTABLE FOR THAT? What do you think the Lord thinks about that? They're spending it on weapons to destroy life & destroy the Earth, spending it on total destruction, when they could be feeding all those people, taking care of them, helping develop their countries with industries & things to give them jobs & whatnot or put'm back on the farm & whatever with all that money! It's crazy! "Civilised" man & the Western World have just gone insane, all of them! (Family: There's also been a lot in the papers about how they've been burning the food, they've got so much grain they don't know what to do.) Yes‚ & piling up mountains of surplus Government butter & dairy products!

8. THE POOR PEOPLE OF EGYPT ARE ALMOST STARVING & PRICES ARE SO HIGH, they're having a hard time getting enough to even eat‚ & it's been rumoured that the U.S. has not only been thinking of dumping a lot of wheat in Egypt, which it's already doing, but a lot of butter too, all this surplus butter that they've got because of these dairy farmers up in Minnesota & Wisconsin & places like that where the dairy farmers have their stronghold & some of the biggest lobbies in Washington.

9. IMAGINE! THE U.S. COMPLAINING ABOUT FARMERS' SUBSIDIES IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES IS SO RIDICULOUS! They've got some of the biggest subsidies in the United States of any place in the World! They keep the dairy industry, the wheat industry & some of those all going! And the way they do it is simply refusing to let the price of anything fall, & if the price of wheat falls below a certain level, then the government buys it, what they call "price-supported", which is subsidies.

10. IN OTHER WORDS‚SAY WHEAT IS $5 A BUSHEL, IF THE PRICE ON THE MARKET FALLS BELOW THAT‚ THEN THE GOVERNMENT WILL BUY ALL YOUR BUSHELS FOR $5 A BUSHEL. And that's how the government gets all that grain stored up, literally billions of bushels of grain, & is able to dump it on Russia & a few other places‚ selling it even cheaper! Well, at least it's doing some good. Now they've got a mountain of butter accumulating, just like the EEC did for awhile & still does, but then the farmers don't want them to sell it or sell it to some other poor country that really needs it & the people need it at a little nominal price, for fear that will cause the price of butter to decline at home!—That's withholding it from the poor!

11. THEY'RE WITHHOLDING IT FROM THE POOR COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD FOR FEAR IT'S GOING TO ROB THE RICH! Those selfish rich farmers, agro-business now is not just farmers, I mean it's thousands of acres worked by machinery & a crew, it's a big corporation business! Farming today in the U.S. is a multi-million dollar business, one big farm‚ & you've got to be a millionaire to run it!—Like some of those cattle ranches like the King Ranch down in South Texas. I mean, when you go down to Brownsville & those little towns way down at the tip of Texas, you drive through 100 miles of the King Ranch!—100 miles of the trip you're just driving through hundreds of thousands of acres of the King Ranch! I've forgotten how many million acres just this one cattle ranch alone has—a big multi-million-dollar business!

12. THOSE CATTLE MEN & THOSE BIG FARMERS ARE MILLIONAIRES! It's no longer a little family–farm affair. The poor little family farm can't make it any more because they've been squeezed out of business by the big mechanised farms running on huge income & selling at such low prices the little family farmer can't even survive! He can still make it for himself‚ but see, that's what's cut the family farmer out—he wasn't satisfied in just growing enough for his own family, but he had to have a new car & a television & all kinds of other stuff, & he couldn't make that much money off of a small family farm. So he quits the farm & goes to town & gets a job.—Or he keeps the farm, goes to town & gets a job, works there five or six days a week, & then comes out & works the farm on the weekend. Because he just likes to keep it as kind of a place to go home to. But they can't make it pay enough to buy all the luxuries they would like to have, because the agro–business farm prices are too low.

13. YET THE U.S. IS COMPLAINING ABOUT EEC SUBSIDIES & THE EEC IS COMPLAINING ABOUT U.S. SUBSIDIES, BUT THEY'RE ALL IN THE SAME GAME DOING THE SAME TRICKS, & yet they complain about each other using the same methods because it keeps their prices up high. And the latest bright idea that the U.S. government has for...is it potatoes or corn or was it wheat? They've got a great method over there‚ the not-raising-wheat business! You've heard about the not-raising-hogs business. The U.S. government is now offering the farmers, in order to keep the price of grain up, if they would please not plant any grain this year, for whatever acreage of grain, so many tons of grain that they promise not to raise that they could have raised or would have raised‚ the U.S. government will give them the surplus grain out of its huge surplus storage granaries!—Give it to'm! The U.S. government can't sell it below the set floor that the government has set for the bottom price for the wheat. They can't sell it, so now they're going to give it back to the farmers!—Who can turn around & sell it back to the Government!—Crazy!

14. WHO PAYS? NOT US, THANK GOD! BUT THE POOR OVER–BURDENED AMERICAN TAX-PAYER, HE'S GETTING TO WHERE HE'S JUST ABOUT HAD IT!—Working 3 days a week for the government & 2 or 3 for himself! It's gotten to where nearly every American is now a slave of the U.S. government! Free country? It's one of the biggest slave–owners in the World, the U.S. Federal government! They're all slaves since they got that income tax! And the great country that once boasted that unlike England it had no debtor's prisons, it's got prisons just loaded with debtors—Federal income tax debtors! It's crazy, just crazy! It's amazing what people will put up with!—As long as they can have their luxury & their home & car & television & think they're really well-off system-addicts!—They're dumb slaves without freedom! Well, that's bad news & sad news, & thank God we've escaped from that!

15. BUT TO THINK WHAT THEY SPEND, JUST ONE COUNTRY, THE RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, WHAT IT SPENDS JUST ON ARMS ALONE EACH YEAR, COULD PAY THE INCOME OF EVERY POOR LITTLE PEASANT IN THE WORLD! Think of it! Of course, that probably wouldn't be good for the peasants to just get income from the Federal Government & not have to work for it. But surely the Government could figure out some way‚ some make-work type of public works or make new industries or establish agricultural developments & whatnot. These poor little farmers, they don't need very much help, but even if they had a little help, every little bit would help—a little irrigation or a little seed or a little this or that to help them just even get started or keep their heads above water. They could work away & they could make it. Here they're trying to eke out a living & just raise enough rice to feed themselves & their families!

16. SO WHEN YOU THINK OF WHAT THE WORLD SPENDS ON ARMS, IT IS HORRIBLE!—What the Western powers spend! We ought to include Russia in that because it's really Western. This business about East & West is ridiculous! It's North & South really! They do the same thing, they spend billions on armaments & war. The North could be supporting the entire Third World—in fact, two–thirds of the World! They could be supporting'm & developing'm & everything else!

17. THAT'S WHY THOSE COUNTRIES, THE SO–CALLED ENEMIES OF THE UNITED STATES AFTER WORLD WAR 2, SUDDENLY GOT SO RICH & SO PROSPEROUS—GERMANY & JAPAN! Right after WW2 why did they get so rich all of a sudden, when they were almost completely devastated & bankrupt & went broke in business & everything due to the war, were down to almost nothing & their money worth almost nothing, how come they bounced back so fast & went straight to the top to where now there's a higher rate of pay in Germany & Japan than there is in the United States?—Higher per capita income! Why? Why have they been so prosperous? Why?—Because the Allies forbade them to spend any more money on arms & armies! They stopped spending all that money they'd been spending on war & they spent it on themselves & their people & their own industries & development instead & they just boomed! Whereas the people who so-called won the war‚ the Allies, they're still suffering for it & they'll never get it over it! The next War will catch up with them before they get through paying for the last one! They haven't even finished paying for the Civil War yet! But they'll all pay under God's Wrath before long! Hal!