Higher taxes paid for WW II, federal projects

I respond to the Sunday letter "Higher taxes on wealthy drive economic progress" from Peter Cochrane. The period from late 1929 when the stock market collapsed to almost the end of World War II was known as The Great Depression. If the war hadn’t come about young men would have been unemployed.

Yes, after 1945 the economy did get better: postwar marriages, the Baby Boom, new housing, etc., as manufacturers had to produce everything from clothing to furniture and other household products. The economy only picked up during World War II because of the production of airplane, tanks, uniforms, etc., and afterward due to shortages of everything.

During this period those high taxes were used either for federal projects to keep men working during the 1930s or during the war to pay for it.

manner that brings the facts to the fore, it also educates us to the sometimes terrifying possibilities of what damaged people are capable of doing and so we should beware. And it exposes the cracks in the institution’s armor.

Mount Carmel West was my hospital growing up on the West Side. We received good care. Yet now, because of these forced deaths, that entire institution is slimed with the shame of what has happened there.

Reporter Holly Zachariah shined the light of truth, compassion and the fragility of our humanity in the article.

Patricia Wynn Brown, Columbus

Dividend would encourage conservation, defray costs

I respond to the Saturday letter “Carbon Dividend Act would reduce emissions” from E. Marianne Gabel. Resource economists have a long history of estimating the uncompensated costs of production and combustion of fossil fuels. Researchers at Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C., had already determined that by early in this century it would be necessary to add $1 a gallon to gasoline and diesel taxes to account for the costs of water and air pollution from drilling for oil, refining and final combustion.

More recent evidence of rising sea levels, more devastating droughts and wildfires and more damaging storms and flooding from climate change suggest that the earlier RFF estimates understate the full external costs of fossil fuels.

Raising the prices of fossil fuels with fees at the mine or wellhead or by carbon taxes or trading not only helps compensate for external costs but also provides a stronger incentive for conservation of natural resources.