Katrina. Failure of free market fundamentalism.

Editor,

The 1% of the American population who own 40% of the wealth of this nation -- and who own every level of our government -- don't seem to understand that the other 99% of us believe the purpose of government is to provide a means for citizens to pool our resources and provide ourselves services, like disaster preparedness and recovery, that none of us can buy ourselves.

Rich people assume that "the market" will provide goods and services people need and that every individual's portfolio will be sufficiently diversified to purchase his or her choice of these products.

So here is a lesson on free market fundamentalism. People who cannot afford to flee a hurricane starve and die. Residents who used to live and work in a city devastated by a hurricane -- but do not have "music" or "food" or "culture" to sell to tourists -- return to find their homes boarded up or torn down. When your money runs out because your job was washed away by a hurricane, you starve and die on the street of a free market fundamentalist American city.

Hard times for working people are a matter of life and death. For the rich who own America hard times are a quarter or two of unfavorable returns on their investments -- nothing a little war or downsizing or outsourcing cannot fix.