Downward economic spiral likely to continue

I tuned in to Fox's Neil Cavuto show today and saw that he had as a guest, Arthur Laffer, former economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan.

They were discussing Federal income tax rates and Cavuto asked him what the tax rates were when Reagan took office. Laffer answered, 70% on income over $212,000 and 50% on income up to that. Capital gains tax was 40% (I believe it had been lowered to 28% by then) and Corporation tax was 50%

Then Laffer said: Of course we didn't have the deficit-debt problem today's economy has.

I wanted to shout into the television, Duh!

Here we had paid for the Second World War, where nearly 700,000 mostly lower and middle class soldiers had given their lives to save democracy and the assets of mostly the upper class. We had paid for the rebuilding of Europe and Japan, as well as for our depleted military. We had paid for the Korean conflict, the GI Bill, Eisenhower's national highway system, and the Vietnam War, to mention a few. Plus the middle class was thriving at its zenith.

Now, consider that after 9-11 when we entered into wars with Afghanistan and Iraq, instead of raising taxes to pay for them, we gave massive tax cuts to the wealthy whose assets we were now protecting from terrorism; And consider that our congress put through an expensive prescription drug bill with no revenue to offset it.

You see why we have a deficit-debt problem they didn't have in Reagan's time that Laffer pointed out! It's a revenue/spending dilemma they didn't have.

Most of our Republican Congressmen have signed Grover Norquist's pledge not to raise taxes under any circumstances. As long as they abide by that paralyzing pledge, red ink will splash all over any attempt to resolve it.

And that thriving middle class? It'll likely continue its downward spiral.

Darrell Moss

Moses Lake