Adopt a flat tax
For crying out loud, why can’t Congress simplify and overhaul the tax code to a basic flat tax? That way everybody pays in to support the many worthwhile expenditures of a democracy.
Let’s say 6.5 percent, period. I am pulling this out of thin air, but it’s a start. And say businesses pay 10 percent. Then, you adjust expenditures to live within your means.
Simple, huh? Start there.
David Corriveau
Caribou
Collins showed her true colors
While many of us breathed a deep sigh of relief late on Dec. 12 after the defeat of Roy Moore’s senatorial ambitions in Alabama’s election, the stain on the GOP will not go away quite so easily. And it is not only in Alabama where the Republicans have abandoned their values in order to get a quick legislative win.
Even in our own state, Sen. Susan Collins has shown her true colors this week in choosing to vote for a GOP tax bill, which many call a “tax scam,” that undermines and endangers her own constituents. There are very few economists who believe this tax bill is a good idea, and many have written about how grossly it will impact the middle class and the working poor across the nation.
Yet, Collins continues to play footsie with the bill, coyly accepting empty promises from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, all the way ignoring the will — and the pleas — of her constituents, from retirees to students, nurses to clergy, some of whom were arrested last week.
Shame on her, and shame on the GOP.
Nico Jenkins
Blue Hill
Dire tax predictions
I am retired and have the time to watch and read a wide variety of daily news reports on the tax bill. I would like to offer the American people some facts, food for thought, and a few predictions.
If you make less than $75,000 per year, you are getting a tax increase over the life of this bill. The vast majority of Americans fall into this category. If you make between $30,000 and $50,000, your tax increase begins as early as 2020. The corporate tax rate is cut permanently from 35 percent to 21 percent. The “pass-through” rate for businesses is cut to 20 percent. The top 1 percent of earners get more than 50 percent of the tax cut. Everyone who has health insurance will see premium increases. Millions more will lose their insurance completely.
In recent weeks, there were news reports, carried in the Bangor and Portland newspapers, that in the next 12 years as many as 70 million jobs across the U.S. will be lost to automation. With the passage of this tax bill, corporations will have incentives to accelerate the installation of robots and put people out of work. They can write off the cost of installing the robots. They no longer will have the overhead of labor costs — no more wage, insurance, or pension costs. Their increased windfall profits will be taxed at only 21 percent. No one is talking about this, but it is coming soon.
Paul Cyr
Madawaska
Crackdown on drug dealers
In a recent edition of the paper, there was a story about a Dresden man who was sentenced to 10 month in prison for selling heroin and crack cocaine over a two-year period. The maximum sentence for this is 20 years and $1 million fine. Until we start handing down serious sentences for this type of crime, the war on drugs in this state is a big farce.
Fred Carey
St. George
Climate change threatens business
I was delighted by the BDN’s presentation of an article about international climate scientists awarded grants to continue their climate research in France. I especially appreciated that the BDN set this article, about French President Emmanuel Macron’s support for climate research, in the Business section. Business is exactly where climate change risks, climate research and climate mitigation belong. Business success requires a stable environmental climate as much as it needs a stable economic climate. Moreover, successful businesses never ignore risks: the most successful enterprises pay experts to help with risk management.
Also, America’s history of funding scientific research has demonstrated that well-supported researchers, shielded from administrative meddling and surrounded by diverse colleagues, produce results that benefit humanity and spur economic development.
Ironically, the Wall Street Journal didn’t mention these grant winners. Instead, WSJ editors wrote an editorial about Macron’s rise in the polls. They attributed his growing popularity to his free-market outlook and his desire to rollback regulations — particularly labor laws. Predictably, WSJ editors abhor labor regulations as restricting market operation.
With hypocrisy, they can’t acknowledge that unregulated carbon emissions endanger other businesses and humans, and climate change is the free-market’s greatest failure. Sadly, they reject non-regulatory, free-market solutions to climate change, which would be so easy to implement and would manage our climate risks so well.
Judy Weiss
Brookline, Massachusetts
Collins put party before constituents
Supporters of the GOP tax scam, like Sen. Susan Collins, would have you believe that it simplifies the tax code. It doesn’t. It adds hundreds of pages of new regulations to help billionaires and corporations.
There are new special regulations to help “pass-through” professional corporations, and others to help so-called C corporations, and help for owners of private jets and for-profit “universities.” They also cut all sorts of deductions that many people use. The lion’s share of these tax cuts — which are projected to explode the deficit — will go to billionaires and corporations. (In case you hadn’t heard, many corporations — who employ armies of tax accountants and lawyers — already pay low taxes.)
I don’t mind paying my fair share of taxes, but it bothers me that most middle-class people like myself have not gotten a significant raise in more than 30 years. All the gains from our economy have gone to the wealthy. Why do Republicans only care about wealthy donors and corporations? It just makes me wonder why anyone who isn’t a millionaire would ever vote for a Republican.
I always thought Collins was a moderate, but now it’s obvious she is putting a win for her party before the interests of her constituents. Our children and grandchildren will be paying for these increases to the deficit.
Samuel Winch
Lubec