When I was a child, corporations and wealthy individuals paid far more taxes than they do today.
No one suggests that they should once again pay the rates they paid in the 1950s. People like to indulge in nostalgia about the “good old days,” but perhaps we need to think about some of the things that might have made those days good.
Tax rates for the rich have gone down steadily for the past 30-plus years. This has resulted in higher taxes for the rest of us, which seems connected to many people’s beliefs that the rich are not paying their fair share.
No American got rich on his own. He was dependent, often on inherited wealth, always on an infrastructure paid for by all of us. If he did not live here, he might never have become so wealthy, but it seems most wealthy people do not feel they owe their country anything.
It is time to let the Bush-era tax cuts for the extremely rich expire; they never should have existed in the first place. I call on Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to support the expiration of these cuts, to act as patriotic Americans despite their wealth.
Susan Elizabeth Siens
Unity
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