Letters to the editor
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Corbett made responsible cuts to education
My response to Judy Wertheimer's Jan. 29 Forum piece regarding cuts in state funding for education ("Not Concerned About Budget Cuts to Public Education? Then You Are Not Paying Attention") is as follows: It's about time!
Pennsylvania's funding for pre-K through 12 education grew more than 4.6 percent annually over the 10-year period ending June 2012, and this growth rate would've been even greater if it weren't for the cuts initiated by Gov. Tom Corbett. This growth is nearly double the rate of inflation over the same period. The average teacher's salary in the state has now surpassed $60,000 (for 10 months' work!), and this number does not include very generous health and pension benefits, all of which are guaranteed by the taxpayers.
The bottom line is that President Barack Obama's ill-conceived "stimulus" package bought public-employee unions (teachers included) a two-year respite from economic reality that ended in 2011. When Gov. Corbett cut education spending this past year, he only did what any responsible leader would do when a budget line item has grown at twice the rate of inflation for so long: He cut it!
CHARLIE SMITH
Marshall
Get all the tax facts
This is in response to Brian O'Neill's Jan. 29 column ("Real American Dream: Easy Cash Falls in Lap With a Teeny Tax Bite"). Mr. O'Neill, like all liberals, discusses taxes using only the rate applied to income. They never do the math and there is a reason why -- it would severely weaken their argument.
Let's use Mitt Romney as an example. Using round numbers Mr. Romney made, say, $20 million in 2009. The liberals complain that he paid the same rate as a middle-class taxpayer who made $80,000. Now let's do the math. At the tax rate of 15 percent, Mr. Romney paid roughly $3 million in taxes and the average Joe paid $12,000 in taxes, a whopping $2,988,000 difference. Or put another way, Mr. Romney paid 249 times more tax than the average Joe!
Now Mr. O'Neill goes on to discuss his inheritance or his "sitonyourbutt money," and how that and everyone else's "sitonyourbutt money" is taxed at a lower rate than earned wages. He must assume that everyone's passive income is received the same way his was -- just given to him. He goes on to say that the passive income tax rate is lower because those who make the laws have more passive income than the rest of us.
First Published February 5, 2012 12:00 am
