Dear Editor,
Mr.Thorson and I, no doubt, agree on a great many things including “our life can be good or bad depending (in part) on what we do with it.” (Re: “Capitalism is our gift to ourselves,” May 24, 2018, page 3.)
But the reason low income people get no tax cuts is because they have little or no income on which a tax can be levied. On the other hand, high income people get tax cuts because they have paid their politicians to write laws exempting some, most or all of their income.
We have a big country with a big government which spends a lot of money on wars. Much of that money finds it’s way into the pockets of a lot of our politicians. Before long, the bills come due for this benevolence and are added to our national debt. An ex-vice president assured us that “Deficits don’t matter.” In a certain sense that statement may have been politically convenient, but it was factually false and grievously misleading. That seems to be the nature of politicians!
Whatever the excuse for the grossly uneven distribution of a nation’s income, it has often resulted in bloodshed. The French beheaded their nobles to make that point. King George in England got his come-uppence with the American Revolution. The Romanoffs had to depart from Russia helter-skelter. Those who don’t learn from history are likely to repeat it.
Making a decent living for some average people is getting more difficult. Other people— a small minority— are Capitalists and do not have that problem. Capitalists are not average people. They have a lot of capital and always seek more. They manipulate the capital they have to obtain more.
The other category is the worker class. If you are a lucky worker, no debilitating illness or accident will wipe out your savings or capacity to work— unless a capitalist comes along and buys the only pharmaceutical company that makes the only drug which saves your life on a regular basis.
Or comes along and covets your meager savings accumulated in Social Security.
Remember the Simpson-Bowles Commission.
Or comes along and takes his factory to China or some other slave state. (re: Apple, Ford, GM, Wrangler and so many others.)
Or makes his profit here but declares that it is really an offshore company and the profits are declared there, not here, where the taxes could help repair our bridges.
Or any one of a thousand other schemes cleverly designed to enrich the few at the expense of the rest of us.
P.S. Not all capitalists are bad, there are a few good ones in that barrell of rotten ones.
—Jerry Baird