The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Dividend Divisions

1.6.03 @ 12:01AM

(Page 2 of 3)

Certain industries are very mature and new investment is not warranted for all of the profits generated. Should they start to dabble in some new sidelines? No! What do they know about other businesses than their own? Better they return the money to the shareholders who can buy shares of the same company or another company. This is more efficient use of capital, despite your false thesis.
-- Basil Weir

Michael Craig replies: I agree with my critics that paying a dividend is better than making bad acquisitions or letting the CEO steal the money. But neither is as good -- for investors or the economy as a whole -- as investing the money to improve the company. If a company's only choice is to pay dividends or do something stupid, you should take your money elsewhere. That's how capital moves efficiently. Corrupt, inept companies won't be any more responsible by paying dividends. But they will deprive better companies of capital, by competing for it with good companies who will be judged by their ability to pay dividends, or by forcing those good companies to divert money from worthy projects to maintain the dividend. As Groucho Marx said, "Those are my principles. And if you don't like 'em, I've got others."

COUNTERREVOLUTION
Re: Francis X. Rocca's Forty Years of Sexual Intercourse:

The writer who commented on the 40th anniversary of the sexual revolution seems to have a few things wrong in his analogy. In comparing the "sexual revolution" in the same class as economic and religious liberty is erroneous. First. the latter two meant progression for people in the realm of freedom while the former actually is an enslavement with dire consequences. Neither is it new in our culture. There have been more than a few periods in American history where sexual promiscuity (the proper term for that type of liberation) has been in the forefront and each time it has resulted in disaster for those who practiced it. The same is true today with AIDS, venereal diseases on the rise, hepatitis C, etc. Already there are signs that this type of "liberation" is becoming passé. So while it may be sometime before we get back to the "old morality," we will get there. Thank you.
-- Pete Chagnon

I once heard it said that the only thing revolutionary about the sexual revolution was that people talked more about sex than they used to. I laugh when I hear the abortion liberals on one hand imply they invented sex and on the other scream bloody murder about "the era of back alley abortions" that preceded the sexual revolution. Hmmm -- which was it?
-- Ed Callahan

BORN TOO LATE
In his article "Senator Kerry on Parade," Lawrence Henry makes the intriguing suggestion that the Democrats nominate rising star Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) for president.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), however, that's an impossibility in 2004, as Ford has not yet reached the constitutionally mandated minimum age of 35.

This May he will turn 33.

Best regards,
-- Richard M. Lender
Kansas City, MO

SERIOUS TALK
Re: Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder's Stop the Killing:

I have been guilty of seeing Mason as not much more than a lightweight; more of a clown than a commentator. But no more. He sees clearly what most of us either can't or won't.

Perhaps you can persuade him to write more on this and other matters.
-- Dan Rusen

I just finished reading your amazing article, and felt compelled to respond, something I have never done before.

All of us, as Jews, have I am sure thought seriously how we, if we were in the position to do so, would resolve the problem of the Palestinians and all the latest suicide bombings.

Within the past number of months, I had come to the realization the only answer to our problem in Israel was in fact to move them. My thoughts along with many of my friends, both Jewish and Christian, feel the Arabs are not interested in peace at any cost. We had estimated it would take about $10 billion to build them homes, across into Jordan, and to literally move all of them over there. It would of course be necessary for the West, with the U.S. as the precipitating factor, to assist in this project. The overall cost would be insignificant over time of course. The borders of Israel would then include all of the present West Bank, and all of the Gaza area.

Letter to the Editor

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