Letters and articles in the News Tribune of late have placed fairness, tax cuts, incomes, exemptions, social classes and charitable giving on the discussion table.
One letter, "A tax on the rich taxes income, not wealth," on Nov. 4, advocated an odd nuance between high income and wealth to stall the rising tide for taxing the rich. Instead of coming to grips with widespread economic calamity, cheap shots blamed the victims -- in this case the downwardly mobile middle class. The letter presented evidence that exemptions for raising families are depleting more tax revenue than exemptions for wealth, because wealth transcends payroll taxation and is therefore off the table.
Outsourcing middle-class employment harms the labor market as life-draining spider bites can, liquefying the innards of bugs, leaving an empty shell. An influential economic paper, reported on in the Nov. 15 story, "U.S. middle-class jobs are vanishing -- probably forever," proposed that high-tech computerization dissolves the nation's labor flesh, polarizing the job market into extreme skills too complex to robotize, such as hotel laundry folding and abstract system analysis.
Extending public education to the college level, as the most formidable U.S. competitors do, could increase the relative number of skilled analysts, but the outlook today is many college students are deep in debt, facing a lifetime of low wages. This was detailed in the Nov. 3 story, "Young workers' careers to carry lifelong scars of Great Recession."
It is cynical and counterproductive to imply that wealth is technically not taxable income and that heads of families earning average to low wages must assume blame for yielding insufficient tax revenues. Wealth always has been need-to-know, and the greatest wealth is the most hidden.
ADVERTISEMENT
The best we can hope for in this tax climate is gentle hints from spiritual progressives continuing to influence a thoughtful conscience for charity in a time of great need and aching despair for the future.
Lars White
Duluth
