Letters: U.S. credit, free TV and being number two
Kai Ryssdal: The debt ceiling showdown is behind us — until it gets back in front of us later this fall when the Congressional super-committee on the deficit starts up.
For now, the ratings agencies still have us at Triple-A. But last week, commentator Robert Reich asked who S&P is, anyway, to decide how much we should borrow.
Jim Brinson of San Diego, Calif., called with this comparison.
Jim Brinson: Look at it this way: if you called your credit card company 100 times to raise your spending limit, do you think they would eventually begin to think that you may be a credit risk?
Yesterday, right after the president signed the debt agreement, I asked our New York bureau chief Heidi Moore: What happens now? She said, among other things, that investors are still waiting to see if the costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will come down.
And that, says Elizabeth Fisher from Laconia, N.H., just stinks.
Elizabeth Fisher: I was really angry because she made it sound like investors are just waiting to see whether we’ll actually make the cuts to entitlements. And I’m 63, and I’m sitting here hoping there’s going to be enough left of the entitlements so that I can survive the rest of my life.
I love that she listens, by the way.
Cable company Fox said the other day it’s going to start making people pay to watch its shows online.
Frank Forkl of Rochester, N.Y., says this could bring back a not-so-old-fashioned way of getting TV for free.
Frank Forkl: Being constrained by cable bills, commercials and airing times was inconvenient, so television show piracy began. Then streaming sites like Hulu started, managing to be even more convenient than piracy. If paying becomes a requirement to watch online streams, I see no incentive not to go back to how things were done a few years ago.
Finally, a word about being number two. Commentator Liaquat Ahamad said Friday that China being the world’s biggest economy wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing for the U.S.
That didn’t sit well at all with Riis Larsen of Santa Rosa, Calif.
Reese Larsen: That doesn’t sound like the kind of mentality that will get this country back on its feet and able to address global issues. Let’s not let another opportunity to increase global quality of life turn into a chance to relax into laziness. What happened to our bootstraps?
Grab yours, pull yourself up and write to us.
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