Cost of shortsightedness Dear editor:

Lumber is a manufactured product that comes from trees growing for many decades and even hundreds of years. In the past, loggers and sawmills have kept the lumber and paper supply going at a steady pace. The USDA Forest Service, timber companies and private landowners managed a supply of timber for a sustained yield.

The consumers that opposed logging helped to shut down sawmills and eliminated the loggers, their operations and they even having to sell their equipment. Between 1996 and 2002, 119 sawmills closed in the United States with many in Arkansas. Revenues for schools and communities stopped. Now there is a wood product and lumber shortage and prices are sky-rocking multifold. There is not an adequate supply chain to feed those trying to work on home projects during the pandemic and not enough to rebuild the thousands of homes damage by storms and fires, nor to salvage the millions of trees killed. There is inadequate sawmills and loggers to salvage the millions of acres of timber that has been killed by forest fires and the 6.3 billion trees killed by beetles.

Aldo Leopold said that we are in trouble when people think that heat comes from the stove and milk comes from the milkman. That is exactly where we are, we are in trouble. This shortsighted consumer ideology will keep consumers

paying for their lack of connectivity insight for decades to come. Jerry Davis Hot Springs

Dear editor:

Mr. Jim Davidson’s Sunday column decrying socialism ignored two quite evident facts: the vast number of popular socialistic transfer payments existing in America including SSI, Medicare, Medicaid.

His writing also had no mention of the result of his favored capitalism the wealth distribution within America. The 1% of the wealthiest Americans owning 40% of America’s wealth and the top 10% owning 75% of America’s wealth. The rest of his listed reasons are merely opinions without facts.

It is quite easy to understand why the young he speaks of favor socialism when America’s wealth is held so inequitably. Taxes passes by our current president continue this pattern.

Bill and Joyce Fritz Hot Springs