Letters to the Editor

Letter: Lifting all boats

The New York Times had this to say about the recently passed American Rescue Plan: “The poorest fifth of households will see their income rise by 20%; a family of four with one working and one unemployed parent will receive $12,460 in benefits. Child poverty will be cut in half.”

Let me repeat that: “Child poverty will be cut in half.” This is what the wealth of a nation is supposed to be used for!

Go shove your smug theories about wealth transfers upward “lifting all boats.” This how you lift all those boats — and yachts.

Nobody, literally nobody, is excluded from the benefits of transferring wealth downward. Anyone who argues differently does not understand microeconomics. Yes, the poor will be lifted up, and so will the rich.

Cash registers will ring, manufacturers will produce widgets, banks will act as money utilities and the sharp elbows in their thousand-dollar suits will peddle their debentures.The rich will in fact get richer, but the poor will not be getting poorer — for the first time since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

Sixty years: about the length of time to take me from my first pair of long pants to the casket.

It’s been too long, people.

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— Elstun W. Lauesen

Anchorage

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