Jim Lein, Minot

It shouldn’t have taken a pandemic to show us the obvious: our capitalistic system relies on customers.

Henry Ford figured this out years ago. If his workers couldn’t afford to buy his product, his venture was doomed.

So he upped their beginning salary to the then unheard of $5 dollars a day, enough for them to see their way to buy a $500 new car on a payment plan.

And what have our Republican business folks been doing these last few decades? Sending manufacturing jobs overseas, especially to China, where pay is low and workers live in dormitories, leaving fewer good paying jobs here, thus fewer customers able to purchase goods and services.

Profit before people. Not taking care of our own workers. Breaking unions, which are still active in many other countries where wages and benefits are more humane and where there are more customers able to buy things.

Too much money in too few hands, Wall Street rather than Main Street, is a recipe for financial disaster. We had one in 2007-2008 without a pandemic and now we’re having another one. You can’t run a country where too much wealth is in too few hands.

We can’t maintain basic services like roads and bridges and clean water, and the GOP wants to end Social Security, Medicare, public libraries and schools, the post office, as well as medical and nutritional services for pregnant women, the unborn, infants and children.

We need to move from the current Bad Deal for all but a few to a Better Deal for most of us.