Jim Lein, Minot

Once again the GOP is faced with something they are loath to do: another financial bailout for those unemployed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet GOP efforts over the years have stripped away worker benefits: living wages, solid retirement and healthcare plans, unemployment compensation, and a voice through union representation.

Other first world countries have these things in place. They didn’t need to invest nearly as much we have in emergency worker compensation to keep their economies going.

Over the years we have reduced the buying power of Main Street by structuring the economy so that more and more goes to Wall Street.

And now we are in a pickle, needing customers with the funds to buy things to keep our economy moving. Yet the GOP is very reluctant to help the out of work, even though it is GOP policies that have left these newly unemployed so exposed to poverty and homelessness.

I can’t help but think again of Henry Ford who was certainly a hardnosed capitalist. Yet he knew back in 1914 that if he didn’t pay his workers more they could not afford to buy one of his cars.

So he upped their salary from $2.30 to $5 a day. The obvious moral for businesses: don’t treat workers badly, stripping away their benefits. You never know when you will really need them as customers.