A higher wealth tax won’t really hurt the billionaires

The often quoted phrase, “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics,” attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, is an apt description of Tracy C. Miller’s Sept. 8 OpEd column, “Elizabeth Warren’s ‘wealth tax’ is poor substitute for a truly workable policy”.

Relying upon 2014 data, rather than more recent information following the 2018 Trump tax cuts, Miller argues that it would be unfair to further tax the top 0.1 percent of income earners because they already pay 31.1 percent of their income in federal taxes. (According to Fox Business News, the rate is now down to 27.1 percent.)

Pointing to Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, Miller complains that to impose a greater tax burden “means less incentive to serve customers through innovation or lower prices.”

Can an economist seriously argue that adding a 2 to 3 percent wealth tax on someone worth $8 billion is going to cause him (or her) to stop producing their products and forego continuing to make millions or billions more?

Perhaps the most critical statistic which Miller ignores is that generally acceptable economic analyses agree that the top 1 percent of American households hold significantly more of this country’s wealth (between 34 and 39 percent) than the bottom 90 percent (25 to 29 percent).

Contrary to Miller’s implication, Steve Jobs and other American billionaires did not accumulate and maintain this vast wealth on their own.

They accumulated it with the help of workers who were educated by our country’s schools and teachers; by transporting their products using public highways, bridges, airports, ports and other infrastructure; and by being protected by our country’s police, fire fighters, courts, military, public health agencies, weather services and so on. – Robert D. Peltz, Miami

END GUN VIOLENCE

This week, we returned to Washington to keep tackling a public health epidemic unique to our country: Gun violence.

It’s been almost 200 days since the House passed universal background checks and sent it to the Republican-controlled Senate. This critical, common sense bipartisan legislation is supported by 90 percent of Americans, and after El Paso, Dayton, Odessa, and so many other instances of violence, Republicans in Washington have run out of excuses.

While we will keep pressuring Republicans to make universal background checks a reality, the House Judiciary Committee passed new legislation to keep people convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes from purchasing weapons; ban high-capacity ammunition magazines; and provide resources to states and tribes to implement their own “red flag” laws like Florida passed after Parkland. These laws aren’t just to stop the mass shootings that we see on TV — they would prevent domestic abusers from hurting loved ones and limit the deadliness of military-style weapons.

This year, there have already been more than 10,000 deaths due to gun violence. Americans deserve political leaders who listen to them. We won’t stop working in the Judiciary Committee and in Congress until we make our community safer.

– Debbie Mucarsel-Powell,

Ted Deutch, U.S. House of Representatives

UP IN SMOKE?

I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears as I watched Trump saying he wanted to proclaim a ban on vaping and e-cigarettes because six young people (to date) have died from the aftermath of vaping and many more have become seriously ill.

How about the hundreds of people who have been killed and thousands more injured and maimed as the result of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in the recent months and years? Obviously, the smokers don’t have a lobby as aggressive as the NRA!

– Pamela Egloff,

Coconut Grove

HARD OPTIONS

It was very apropos to show a photo of former NRA president Charlton Heston holding up a musket during a rally, which accompanied the Los Angeles Times editorial, “The NRA is many things, but it is not a terrorist organization,” in the Sept. 10 Miami Herald.

The Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, when muskets were the most high-tech weapon available, so our Founding Fathers were clueless about weapons capable of killing humans en masse.

So, for those NRA supporters and our president, who believe the Second Amendment gives them the right to own an AR-15 or an AK-47, the first words in the amendment are “A well-regulated militia...”, which any thinking person would interpret as regulating weapons of war.

If anyone would like to own weapons of war, do what I did and join the military, where you will receive your very own M16 rifle for free.

– Roger Hammer,

Homestead

VAPING BAN

President Trump is considering a ban on the sale of flavored electronic cigarettes after six people died.

Yet, data from respected studies all conclude that on average, the presence of a semiautomatic weapon in a shooting is associated with four deaths instead of two.

Hundreds have died or been hurt with these weapons. Yet, no ban on them is being proposed by the White House or the GOPcontrolled Senate.

How many more innocent lives must be cut short before the NRA loosens its grip on our elected officials?

– María-Elena López,

Coral Gables

VAPING VS. GUNS

Re the Sept. 10 editorial, “Time to close in on the vaping industry:” Four users died from lung ailments allegedly caused by vaping. In addition, the FDA issued a stark warning to e-cigarette makers. All good and necessary.

Now if we can only get the Senate and its so-called leader to approve the gun control legislation passed by the House of Representatives with the same sense of urgency.

The proliferation of destructive weapons has killed thousands upon thousands of people, yet we go after vaping instead of gun control legislation.

Something is very wrong in this country and it falls on the bloody hands of the politicians on the NRA payroll, starting with Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio. – Monica Harvey, Miami Shores

BLIND SUPPORT

In Fabiola Santiago’s Sept. 11 column, “With mass deportation of Cubans, Trump acts against his own hard-line Cuba policy,” she rightfully is dismayed and puzzled by the Miami Cuban community’s disregard for the recent repatriation of Cubans to Havana by President Trump.

Mass deportations of Cuban exiles who sought refuge in America from the communist Castro regime highlights Trump’s traitorous subservience to Putin. The anti-communist refugees are being sent back to Cuba to receive their totalitarian punishment!

Cuba is Putin’s ally and Trump does Putin’s bidding.

The patriotic Cubans in Miami stay silent, not protesting their cult leader’s atrocities, because Trump is always right. How unconscionable!

But the lock-step mentality has no monopoly; I have found the same in my Ukrainian-American community.

So many Ukrainian Republicans uphold Trump, no matter what he does.

President Trump is denying Ukraine $250 million worth of weapons to fight the war against the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territories (Crimea & Donbas), although this money was approved by both houses of our Congress.

– Oksana Piaseckyj, Sunny Isles Beach

HOT CARS KILL

We raised four children to adulthood and never once left them in a car, either, as Richard Hoover so proudly proclaims in his Sept. 11 letter to the editor, “Too immature.”

The writer’s insults reminded me that I, too, was once arrogant and judgmental about those who would do such a thing. I’ve since learned that hot-car deaths increased since the 1990s, when laws required placing infant seats in the backseat facing backward, for safety.

But why not add a simple alarm to remind the driver to check in the back?

A communication breakdown resulted in our precious grandson dying in a hot car.

But even if we were completely addle-brained, why should an innocent child suffer and die when we have the technology to prevent it?

An alarm in my car warns when my tire pressure is low.

Think about it.

– James Gersing,

Miami

IT’S AN ART FORM

Some Dolphins players want trades out of Miami. I’d love to see them come play for the Tampa Bay Bucs, where we invent new methods to lose games most every week.

– Jim Robinson,

Clermont