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Trickle-down welfare

John Wodynski recently shared his concern (“Capitalism’s failure,” Letter to the Editor, Sept. 29) about the failure of capitalism and “trickle down” economics. Maybe it’s time to look at a few statistics and income inequality.

$22 trillion have been spent on poverty programs since 1964 (the War on Poverty). That’s right, the current entire national debt today! That represents a massive transfer of wealth. Outside of the current tax law changes who paid for most of this?

The top 1% of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes than the bottom 90% combined. The top 10% paid 71% of income taxes collected and the top 1% paid 40%. The bottom 50% paid 2.75% of income taxes.

Can the top be squeezed a little more? Likely. But where did all that money go? Anyone hear that giant sucking sound? Bureaucracy. All those “programs” to manage this massive transfer of wealth … Did we just have “trickle-down welfare”?

Mike Ryan

Nine Mile Falls

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