Skip to footer

Readers Write: How to eliminate tax breaks (and the deficit); Wake up, 99 percent

Letters to the Editor for the July 30, 2012 weekly print issue: Look at effective tax rates, cap deductions, put an expiration date on tax breaks; With the US meritocracy now based on nepotism and cronyism, the '99 percent' had better wake up and demand better.

How to eliminate tax breaks

Let me take Mattea Kramer's excellent June 18 commentary, "Wipe out federal tax breaks – and the deficit," one step further.

For starters, listing and discussing tax rates obscures actual taxes paid – the effective tax rate after tax breaks are taken into account. It would be more realistic and informative to list what people actually pay.

Eliminating tax breaks could be political suicide, but Congress could place a five-year expiration date on them. These would then have to be rejustified completely after expiration, which could expose their (un)-intended exploitation.

Another way to make tax payments more fair would be to place a cap on anyone's total amount of tax deductions.

Jurgen Pape

Granville, Ohio

Fixing the US meritocracy

John J. Pitney Jr.'s June 25 commentary, "What Obama and Romney should be talking about," cites archconservative political scientist Charles Murray's tome "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010." Focusing on this book demonstrates that this nation needs a much broader discussion on America's class mobility problem.

The American ideal of merit in schooling and work has not gotten us to the expected meritocracy after several decades. What happened along the way is that people who got to the top took the natural steps to ensure they stay at the top. And not just their stay at the top, but that of their progeny and friends as well.

So what we are left with, in essence, is a meritocracy based on nepotism and cronyism. How rare is it to see failure at the top punished?

These are the leaders who brought us the mortgage crisis, Congress, and even the presidency. All of this happened while the American public slept, happily engrossed in their busy lives, willfully ignorant, and woefully inattentive. So when highly talented typical Americans do not get private tutors, special SAT training, and legacy admissions to the best universities, who should be blamed?

The "99 percent" had better wake up and demand better.

Barry Bridge

Ocean, N.J.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Readers Write: How to eliminate tax breaks (and the deficit); Wake up, 99 percent
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Readers-Respond/2012/0730/Readers-Write-How-to-eliminate-tax-breaks-and-the-deficit-Wake-up-99-percent
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe