Tax cut for rich is just what America needs

Editor,

Nothing like a potential tax cut gets liberals hot under the collar and at their irrational best.

Enrique Montoya’s Feb. 22 letter is just one example of unreasonable claims people make against tax cuts when they are faced with the awful possibility that the government may allow taxpayers to keep some of their hard-earned money.

Montoya rips off a five-paragraph diatribe criticizing tax cuts that belongs more in the former Soviet Union than United States. One can hear the echoes of Marx and Lenin in Montoya’s criticisms of the capitalist system, that it will — if it continues on its present course — result in “two types of classes in the United States: the super-ultra rich and their slaves.”

Montoya’s letter succeeds in voicing his claim that, in a society where people are allowed to freely control their own destinies, chaos and tyranny will reign. Only a policy of near confiscatory taxation on those with incomes of more than $1 million and an income redistribution scheme will avert impending doom.

Montoya’s real problem with the U.S. economy is that it permits people to profit from hard work and allows for failure. What will motivate people to work hard and create wealth for themselves and the nation if they are not allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labor?

The ability to tax is the ability to destroy. It can preclude people from utilizing the profits of their talents; to snuff out the risk taking and innovation that has made the United States an economic front-runner in the world from the industrial to the information revolutions. I wonder who Montoya thinks creates the jobs and opportunities that employ so many Americans. Surely it couldn’t be those that are successful, those who have risen in the corporate hierarchy, the people who have created their own wealth with their own hard work. It certainly couldn’t be the top 2 percent of wage earners who pay 80 percent of income taxes. Here Montoya is right on the mark, the rich that pay incredibly high marginal rates bankroll the programs that support the “economically disadvantaged,” who have little or no income tax.

Tax cuts are the right answer both economically and morally. President George W. Bush’s plan reduces taxes for all, save for those who don’t pay taxes and actually get paid money for being poor, † la the “earned income tax refund,” and allows every American to know that the government trusts them to make their own individual decisions.

The tax cut will alleviate the current economic slowdown by allowing greater investment and creating economic expansion. I applaud President Bush on his initiative and await the positive effects of the upcoming tax cut.

Michael Carrasco

UNM student