Generally, I am in sync with Kathleen Parker, but not today. Her May 11 column (Page A11) states “the United States … is suffering a shortage of people willing to work.” It seems to me that her statement should have said that “we are suffering a shortage of people willing to work for $8.65 per hour.”

She also brought up the word “socialism,” though hesitantly. She says that we “are being schooled in what socialism looks like.” Within the past few months, I saw a sentence in a paragraph in newsprint in which the question was asked: Why do we hear about socialism only in regard to the poor? What about the socialism that we poor people are furnishing to the millionaires and billionaires by working for peanuts while they enjoy their millions and billions? I had never thought about that before but have since reflected on it often.

And as things are now going on in Washington, why are we subsidizing our Republican legislators, who are doing no legislating themselves and whose primary goal, by their own admission, is to prevent the Democrats from legislating? I am assuming that despite doing nothing, they continue to receive their salaries. Is that not socialism?

So, why do they complain about the poor receiving government money for not working, while they are doing the same thing?