To the editor:

Imagine, if you will, the United States five years ago at the end of the Clinton administration as a huge $13 trillion snowball with two-thirds of that economic snowball consisting of middle class consumers of goods and services.

Our long history of political stability has been dependent on that same huge middle class that has paid for everything. Consider that the 2 percent at the top pay for nothing because for every million dollars they contribute to Congress, Congress returns them a billion dollars in taxpayer money and allows them to make all the rules. The poor at the bottom pay for nothing because they have nothing.

Now, five years later, the Bush administration has rolled that huge middle class snowball into the Arizona desert. The government has exported almost our entire manufacturing base, along with the jobs and the technology. Most of this has gone to Asia, particularly China and India.

No surprise that huge snowball of middle class consumers is melting away very quickly and along with it the future of America.

Freda Davidson Hickam,

Lawrence