With money, I’ll trust investors over government

The most heated debate of our times is whether the wealthy should pay more taxes. Liberals claim the rich are not paying their “fair share.”

Conservatives counter that the rich already pay a lion’s share of federal income taxes with the top 1 percent of income-earners paying 39.48 percent of all individual income taxes collected in 2014; the top 10 percent, 70.88 percent of individual income taxes; and the bottom 50 percent, only 2.75 percent.

Progressives argue that the rich do not need the extra hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to live comfortably and take care of their families. Therefore the rich should hand over their excess income for the public good.

Very few think about what happens to the extra tax money collected when it’s given to the government versus kept and spent by the wealthy.

If the government gets the money, politicians and bureaucrats decide where the extra tax dollars go. Politicians spend tax money where it benefits them the most by squandering it on projects requested by donors who contribute to their campaigns.

When bureaucrats are left to make decisions without help from politicians, their decisions are mediocre at best because they are not held accountable for their mistakes in judgment.

On the other hand, if the wealthy keep their own money, they invest it in stocks or business ventures or buy something with it, all of which creates jobs and drives innovation that improves the lives of everyone. Furthermore, many wealthy people donate to private charities that are run more effectively than government welfare programs.

So who would you rather have spending that extra money everyone is fighting over — corrupt politicians and unaccountable bureaucrats? Or investors held accountable for their decisions by the marketplace, which is you and me? DAVE MAJERNIK

Plum are “cutting taxes”; they are just delaying them, passing them on to our children. When will they ever learn? RON LALONDE

Harmony

This is in response to the Oct. 18 letter by Richard Muto (“Respect for the Flag”). The hypocrisy is astounding. First, Mr. Muto says NFL players should be thankful that the U.S. won wars, or “these athletes would be under a foreign power that would force them to kneel and bow before it.” Instead, they are under a U.S. power — of a democracy, mind you — who wants to them to stand with hand on heart.

Then, Mr. Muto says, “it appears that kneeling ... has not brought about the changes to the important issue being protested.” No kidding. That’s because people like him and our president have ignored that important issue and made it about the flag! DAVID BINDER Mt. Lebanon

Richard Muto, in his Oct. 18 letter (“Respect for the Flag”), concludes that those who kneel during the national anthem are disrespecting the flag rather than achieving their stated intent.

I would ask him if he also concludes that returning Vietnam veterans who burned the flag in protest to the war were somehow less patriotic, less deserving of the freedoms they fought for or were disrespectful. Or were the hundreds who threw their medals on the steps of the Capitol to draw attention to their cause less of patriots? Who is he or anyone else to

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make that judgment? My father, a Korean War veteran, when I asked him how he felt about protests, responded, “I fought for their right to protest! God bless them.” BOB MORRIS Moon

No one fights or dies for a piece of cloth. The flag is a symbol, not an end in and of itself.

People fight or die or protest for what that flag represents. Our flag, I hope, represents freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom to exist without oppression.

A person who supports a piece of cloth while disrespecting freedom of expression, as our “president” does, is someone who has lost touch with the heartbeat of this nation. Better to kneel during an anthem in protest of police oppression than to pledge allegiance to destroying the Bill of Rights. MARY TERRY

Uniontown