An incentive
With negotiations on avoiding the fiscal cliff seemingly stalled, I'd like to suggest an obvious compromise: Make the taxes on the rich proportional to the unemployment rate.
The wealthy demonstrated in the last election that they are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to elect people to lower their taxes. Why not motivate them to funnel that money instead toward creating jobs?
The key is to make a small increase in the unemployment rate translate to a large increase in both income and inheritance taxes. We could cap the rates as they were during the boom years of the Republican Eisenhower administration: 96 percent. This should encourage them to be better stewards of the economy, and if their financial speculations crash it again, their increased tax rates can help pay to clean up the mess.
The rich will do almost anything to lower their taxes, maybe even create jobs!
CHARLES E. JONES
Mt. Lebanon
Let's move on
I met a young man from a foreign country the other day. We talked and one of the reasons he came to this country was to pursue the great American Dream.
What is that dream that our grandparents came seeking more than a hundred years ago?
They had a vision to exploit the resources this country had to offer. It was a dream of freedom. It was a dream of individual opportunity. This creative principle is the heart of liberty, which is in turn the heart of the American Dream.
Consider this word "liberty" itself. It has been supplanted by the word "democracy."
Our founders adopted the democratic form of government not as an end in itself but as a vehicle for the end, which they were trying to achieve -- that is the emancipation of the individual.
Democracy means government of the people, by the people, for the people.
The burden of these thoughts falls heavily against our government officials. They talk democracy but never mention our liberties. We as individuals are helpless. What can we do if our American Dreams are broken by government?
Let's get off this fiscal cliff and move on to individual liberties.
ROBERT J. LANZA
McCandless
First Published: December 16, 2012, 5:00 a.m.
