The Rich Don’t Need Tax Breaks
One of the greatest cons of our day has been the assertion that we need to make rich people richer in order to create jobs. This is not only false; it is destructive to our environment, way of life, economy, health, spirit, emotions, freedom and democracy.
We hear it all the time: if we don’t let them drill in the Gulf, it will cost this many jobs; if they can’t build a big-box store, the town will lose all their tax money; nuclear power creates jobs; casinos stimulate the local economy; and on and on and on.
Every time the wealthy want to line their coffers, we are sold a bill of goods about how much we need what they are pushing. The simple truth is, they don’t care at all what we need. They sell us everything, but look what they have given us: endless war, environmental havoc, planetary destruction, and government by and for the wealthy.
They control the resources, politicians and media. Right now they are making record profits! If they cared about jobs, they would invest in alternative energy, which would create permanent, well-paying local jobs that can’t be outsourced. They would invest their money in small businesses, public transportation, organic farming, sustainable lifestyles, education, open government, and on and on.
When they tell us we are losing 23,000 jobs because we are not drilling in the Gulf, it is, like all the others, the worst kind of lie. The truth is, we are not struggling for jobs because of a drilling moratorium, or because brown people are taking our jobs, or gays want to get married, or Muslims want to build mosques near Ground Zero. No, the truth is that we are struggling because the rich are sucking the life force out of us.
Frank L. Madaswel
Shelburne Falls
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Should we be giving tax breaks to the wealthy during the harshest economic times since the Great Depression? In a time of record deficits when teachers, policemen, social workers, health care workers—in fact, all workers—are struggling even if they are fortunate enough to have a job?
Well, I think so! The wealthy should be given tax cuts when they don’t know where their next meal is coming from, or how they can afford to buy shoes for their children, or where the money is coming from to pay their bills. When they are engulfed in anxiety because they are so behind in their mortgage that they will be evicted and have nowhere to go. When they can’t have operations to save their lives because they just don’t have the money and the insurance won’t cover it because there’s a pre-existing condition.
In short, I do think the wealthy should be given tax cuts—as soon as everyone has all their basic needs met or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.
Jaffrey Harp
Greenfield
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The rich want everything, take everything and have everything, giving nothing back. There is a price for living in a society. The wealthy act as if they live in a vacuum. We are told that helping the less fortunate and working towards repairing social ills is socialism. Well, if that is socialism, then it sounds pretty good to me.
Don’t like socialism? Fine. Call a Republican when your house is on fire and ask him to put it out. I’m sure you won’t want to drive on our public roads or send your kids to our public schools. These are all things that are part of the social contract and our society and country become better for them. There are hundreds of other things that our already “socialized government” does for all of us every day that make life better for us all.
We are told the wealthy ought not pay their fair share of taxes so that they will have enough capital to create jobs.
What a lie! They don’t invest money in jobs, they hoard it. The last 10 years show how well tax cuts work for creating jobs, not to mention [reducing] the deficit. Let the sun set on tax cuts for the wealthy. Let’s create a better country and world for all of us.
Amanda Plais
Northampton
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Don’t Print Diatribes
First of all, the Editor’s Note appended to Michele Spring-Moore’s letter to the editor [Letters, September 9, 2010] is disingenuous. Everyone knows that not all letters to the editor received are printed; I recognize that you may well not print this one.
You ought to have shown more discretion, translation: judgment, however, and not printed Paul Kokoski’s homophobic rant [Letters, August 26, 2010]—the very point of Spring-Moore’s letter that you seem to have missed.
Such individuals have plenty of other outlets for their tirades in single-issue publications focused on their point of view. To extend the application of a phrase from Mark Clinton’s letter in the [September 9] edition: “The Advocate is under no journalistic obligation to provide” a platform for the authors of such diatribes. Indeed, it calls into question its editorial judgment and consequently reduces its credibility and the public’s esteem for it when it does so.
This would seem to me to be the opposite result from that which you announced as your goal in a recent edition where you discussed the potential that the divorce from the Hartford publication offered for yours. What a good objective, investigative-oriented publication ought to strive for is to provide a balanced, sound view that inspires the confidence of its readers, not a platform from which all comers can sound off.
Marvin J. Ward
Williamsburg
Clarification: The editor’s note to which this letter refers was not responding to Spring-Moore’s opinion of the Kokoski letter, only to the part of her letter that took issue with our “printing letters from outside the Connecticut River Valley area.”
In Defense of Yogurt
I am compelled to write in response to reading, just now, unfortunately, Spencer Morgan’s article “Enough With the Yogurt” [Food, September 16, 2010].
The presentation is tasteless and distasteful, with common, crude and rude, coarse language, mocking, ridiculing, sneering and sniggering to support an extreme one-sided view and statements of “fact” [disparaging] an ancient, well respected, world-wide life-sustaining food.
It is true that generally today’s marketing is not a full, true picture of a product, especially if the company touting the product is not offering an entirely healthy product. Thank goodness the varieties of yogurt—milk, goat’s milk, soy—and the consciousness of select companies will ensure the availability of a tasty and nutrient-dense food.
Nan Willow Rose
Northampton
