In your editorial "Now what for upstate?" July 31, about upstate prisons, one line stood out: "The prisons New York no longer needs ... still provide the sort of decent paying jobs it can't afford to lose, especially upstate."
Uh, no. Such thinking reflects a common but fundamental economic misconception.
What actually creates prosperity and societal wealth? The production of goods and services people want to buy. That, and only that, supports everything else, including government.
We need government, and even some prisons — though not, apparently, all those New York operates. What pays for all that is the production and taxation of saleable goods and services.
Whenever you buy anything, it's because you value it more than the money spent while the seller values the money more. Thus, buyer and seller are both better off.
That's the virtue of a market economy. That's how productive jobs boost prosperity. It's not merely transferring wealth from one pocket to another.
Imagine (as the French seem to) a society with everybody employed by government, pushing papers — a nice picture, with everybody in air-conditioned offices, with generous vacations and fat pensions upon early retirement.
But where does the money for that government come from?
Nowhere. It doesn't work.
The only way to create wealth is production of saleable things.
The unneeded prison jobs your editorial mentions just move money around from some people to others, adding nothing to societal wealth or prosperity.
Frank S. Robinson
Albany