Each day I read of towns divided by agonizing debates over budget deficits threatening essential services and decimating home budgets. Our country claims to be the richest and most powerful in world history, but for most poor and middle-class people we are facing spiking health care costs, slashing town services and staff, laying off teachers, unbearable tax burdens on seniors, eliminating school sports, closing of spray parks, even cutting interlibrary book loans!
Yet today the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 93%. Elon Musk himself owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of American households. Nine hundred and thirty-eight billionaires just got $1.5 trillion richer last year from the largest tax break in history. Jeff Bezos paid an effective tax rate of less than 1%. Corporate America received $900 billion in tax breaks last year, making enormous profits, yet many paying zero in federal income taxes.
What is your tax rate?
There is plenty of money to support the quality of life we expect in this country. And we are generating that money and sending it right to the wealthiest people in America. And now the government is wasting our hard-earned cash on senseless wars to extend a bygone era of fossil fuel dependence (solar and wind being the cheapest ways to generate electricity). All through our hard work, consumer spending, and federal income taxes.
Are you like me making the connection to why your town has a budget deficit?
Keith H. Davis
South Hadley