"Chicago Sun-Times" readers take on tax cuts for the rich, again!

[DailyGrind51]

GOP created huge deficit, wants poor to pay the price


September 20, 2010

In this election season, we see Republicans running against the very thing they helped create, record deficits -- largely accomplished by establishing the lowest tax rates in history for the wealthiest Americans.

And now that this policy has created an elite set of extremely wealthy Americans, while at the same time relegating one in seven Americans to live in poverty, what's their solution?

More tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Matthew Berley,

Lincoln Park
Can't afford tax cuts for rich

While some call for extending all of the 2001 and 2003 federal tax cuts that soon expire, this is not what the economy needs in the near term -- and it risks adding too much to our national debt over the long term.

Extending the "middle-class" tax cuts is the right thing to do to strengthen our weak economy. Middle-income families will put that money right back into the economy, which will help create jobs.

High-income people tend to spend less of their tax cuts.

That's why the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that, out of a dozen policy options studied, extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of households is the least effective way to create jobs and spur economic growth.

Those wealthiest households would not walk away empty-handed. They also benefit from what are called middle-class cuts, because they will get the same tax cut as everyone else for the first $250,000 of their earnings.

In fact, they will realize a bigger tax cut than most middle-income taxpayers.

Extending the tax cuts that go exclusively to households earning more than $250,000 -- even doing so temporarily -- makes it more likely they will be extended permanently without being offset. That would increase the national debt by $1 trillion over the next decade. We don't need a "deficit commission" to tell us we can't afford to do that.

Kathy Ryg,

president,

Voices for Illinois Children

http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/letters/2726400,CST-EDT-vox20a.article

[RandomThoughts]

1. If tax cuts for the rich can be ended in a year.

They can be ended now. Tax cuts for the rich do not create jobs, nor help the economy. They actually do the opposite of that.

[surrealAmerican]

2. k & r

That first letter is spot on.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. My letter published in the San Jose Merc Sept 17

San Jose

Where are all the jobs from tax cuts?

I'm so tired of hearing the Republican talking point that tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of industry create jobs. If this were true, we should have achieved full employment by the end of President George W. Bush's first term and by the end of his second term we should have been welcoming truckloads of foreign nationals in to fill all the jobs that had gone unmanned because we didn't have enough Americans to fill them.

Instead we got Depression-era unemployment levels, poison food, exploding oil and gas lines, a complete Wall Street meltdown and crumbling infrastructure. The next time someone tells you that tax cuts for the rich create jobs, ask them where all the jobs are. I'll tell you where they are: China and India.

Buddy P. Gill

San Jose

Which started a small shitstorm of letters expressing similar thought with at least two a day published since mine.

[truedelphi]

4. great letter. Glad it inspired others to

Repeat the talking points.