Microsoft

* Re Microsoft: Our impeached president, who has never earned a paycheck from a profit-making company in his entire life, and his incompetent Justice Department have decided they know more about our economic system than does the most successful businessman of the past 50 years, Bill Gates.

At the same time that these socialistic, anti-business know-nothings want to take apart the most successful company of the computer age, they are pushing to open trade with that paragon of fairness and honest business dealing, Communist China. It appears that they think they have not yet sent enough of our good-paying manufacturing jobs to foreign countries. Maybe Gates should move his entire operation to China.

JACK WEBER

Irvine

*

I’m a pinko do-good liberal from way back, but I find myself with a strange sympathy for Gates. Microsoft wasn’t always a monopoly. It has grown from infancy using the same admittedly fierce sorts of practices that Gates’ competitors now lament are wasted on this Baby Huey. I say simply declare him, for the time being, to be a monopoly, and let that be it. But to call a coroner to a coronation seems unfair to me. First you get a winner, then you move the finish line.

RONALD WEBSTER

Long Beach

*

If the Justice Department prevails in its suit to break apart Microsoft, we undoubtedly will have to deal with the Dow 31.

BILL FLANZBAUM

Pacific Palisades

*

The Justice Department claims its action will help and protect consumers by saving us money. Maybe it will. But I wonder how long it will take average consumers to make up the money they lost from their mutual funds, pension funds, 401(k)s, IRAs, etc. from the software savings that may be the result of this action? Thank you, DOJ, but please don’t help me anymore. I can’t afford it.

DICK MASSA

Ventura

*

Joel L. Klein of the Justice Department’s antitrust division says the Microsoft breakup would provide consumer benefits akin to those provided by the AT&T; breakup (April 29). That alone is a good argument not to do it.

I remember when consumer long-distance service was a controlled, economic convenience, whereas now we have companies that do not honor credit cards of other companies, small toll-service providers that do not respond to complaints and, now, a reformation of conglomerates out of the old Bell system. The marketplace and electronic evolution will take care of the Microsoft problem. If there is a real monopoly, it is AOL.

R.W. TOLBERT

Long Beach