Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Should we be casting blame at the rich?

Mark D. Traeger, in his Thursday letter to the editor, wrote that he doesn’t understand people who rail against the rich. Perhaps we should not be directing anger at the rich, but we must examine why some people support the rich and others display anger.

When George W. Bush took office, there was a projected surplus estimated at $1.35 trillion. His first thoughts were pragmatic. He knew that Congress would spend as much money as the Treasury took in, so he declared the surplus as the people’s money and the people should get it back. The tax rate schedule was reduced. This was done by congressional vote. What was not in the equation was the need for more than a trillion dollars to pay for two subsequent wars.

Because the very rich account for most of the taxes paid to our Treasury, the tax cut resulted in a dramatic drop in taxes collected by the government. Once the tax cut was under way, it was defended as a way for the very rich to hire more workers, but that did not happen. In fact, fewer jobs were created than were created during the prior eight years when the tax rate was higher. The rich used their windfall to create jobs overseas where they could improve profit margins, thus reducing the number of jobs in America. And the debt grew. Boy, did it!

But why despise the rich for this? I can see intelligent people showing anger toward the greedy Wall Street gang that created toxic assets that resulted in them getting richer and millions of middle class people losing their savings. I think most of us admire the people who gain wealth by working hard, competing against each other and getting ahead, but it is not easy to admire people who get rich because of oversights by our government.

Maybe the blame is unfairly put on the very rich and should be redirected toward a federal government that is failing to make the right calls far too often.

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