Bye-bye, middle class

The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy must expire because they are not paid for. They bring in only 15 percent of our GDP, which is the lowest since World War II, and that added $2.6 trillion to the deficit.

Ten percent of our top income earners own 72 percent of our nation’s wealth (cash, stocks, bonds, real estate, etc). The bottom half of our citizens own only 2.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The top 1 percent earned $400,000 and up, and they received two-thirds of our income gains in 2002-’07. When that happens, we have an aristocracy, and that is not what our country was founded on.

Some say don’t tax the wealthy because they create jobs, but with all that wealth concentrated in so few, where are the jobs? They went overseas! We will not create jobs here when we give corporations tax benefits for sending jobs overseas. Several of these corporations, like GE and Exxon, paid NO income taxes in the U.S. last year. That adds to the deficit.

Unless these tax gifts to the wealthy end and unless we stop giving tax breaks for sending jobs overseas, we will continue to watch the deficit grow and the middle class of America disappear.

Larry M. Belmont

Coeur d’Alene