October 14, 2004

Dear Editors (if I have previously submitted, please accept my sincere apology!):

If you are “average,” then your personal share of MAINTENANCE, not retirement, of THIS YEAR’S USA FISCAL DEFICIT amounts to about $20 a month. That assumes 6% long-term interest and excludes the “lowest” 10% and the highest 3% on the income scale. Four more years like the fiscal year just ending and your monthly bill would be at least $100. Not per household, per person. Once a commercial realtor told me quite earnestly, that he believed those “most productive” should pay the least in taxes, and not the most. This guy was pulling down half a mil a year in a very volatile business. All of us should ask, “Productive to or for whom?” I wonder if he ever met Leona Helmsley (“taxes are for the ‘little people'”). To one-up selfishness, just look at certain shoes advertised in the Wall Street Journal. They are lined with deerhide and include 18k gold shoestring eyelets. Should we forget those who have no shoes at all? By the way, tax cuts do not lead to more hiring; only higher demand does that. And if hiring fails to occur, demand is doomed. Considering so much avarice so widely evident, maybe we are anyway.

Yours truly,

Gregory IwanPreliminary Candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree