(Last week, we asked readers this question: “What plan proposed at the state or national level do you believe would make the biggest dent in income and wealth inequality in New Hampshire?” Here are the responses we received.)
The wealthiest 1% in the United States hold about 40% of all wealth and the bottom 90% hold less than 25% of all wealth. Said in another way, about 3 million people have 40% of the wealth while about 300 million have less than 25% of all wealth, and this is morally wrong! I believe that the fundamental problem has been and will continue to be greed.
Greed is the sin that demands more and more even when we already have enough. Greed demands more and more at the expense of others, and all of us are guilty of this sin but not on the same scale as wealthy corporations.
How is it that many corporations like Amazon, Netflix, Chevron, etc. paid no income taxes for 2018, when most of the rest of us did pay taxes? Why is it that the Trump tax cut benefited the wealthy more than the rest of us?
We live in a society where the wealthiest use money to tip the playing field in their favor. Money generates access to those politicians who make the rules and those rules can be written to further generate more wealth for the wealthy.
Our system is corrupt and can’t be fixed until we get to the root of corruption: money in politics and special interest groups, like the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical and gun manufacturing industries that can buy politicians to do their bidding.
The Constitution starts with “We the People of the United States,” not “We the Corporations of the United States,” yet “people” do not have the same voice in our government that corporations have and that must change.
We need a new American Dream based on equality and sustainable growth and not just maximizing profits. The cost of sharing opportunity and wealth may be high for today’s elites, but the alternative is far worse, and I believe it is one of the main causes of so much division in this country.
RON LITALIEN
Canterbury
When the top 1% of Americans own as much as the bottom 40%, and the top 0.1% own as much as the bottom 20%, we know we have a problem.
Income and wealth inequality have grown every year in this country for more than four decades, and this disparity is sapping our strength and resilience as a nation. In a democracy where every vote should count and every person should be valued, we simply cannot say some individuals and interests count more or are vastly more valued than so many others.
We all know there are many factors contributing to this, from the decline of labor unions, to the outsourcing of American jobs, to the shrinking job market as artificial intelligence reduces the need for workers (and those are just the start). Clearly there is no simple fix to this. But the bottom line is that the rich get richer because they have money that can make more money, and they have influence that can protect their money from taxation. In my opinion, therefore, a solution that can benefit the most people at the expense of the fewest must include a revamped taxation system.
Many of our Democratic presidential candidates have spoken about this, and I’m open to many of their proposals, but I think we need to face the fact that our current tax system, biased so strongly toward the super rich and toward wealthy corporations, all while adding trillions to our national debt, is Wrong with a capital “W.”
We need to insist that the super rich, who can most afford to pay, and whose quality of life would be least affected by paying their fair share, do exactly that, and without loopholes that enable them to shirk their duties. And I believe we need to insist that corporations, who are not “persons” in any sense that I use the word, need to own up to the fact that they owe a responsibility to actual persons who pay taxes even more than they owe a responsibility to their shareholders.
These measures would help across the country, and they would help us here in New Hampshire, too.
MILLIE LaFONTAINE
Concord