It truly disgusts me that, in this time of heavy losses (jobs and retirement investments) for the average worker at Enron and WorldCom, George Will turns a happy and willful blind eye to 21st century realities. In his ode to Milton Friedman, Will exalts that Friedman's ideas "... inserted in political discourse such (then) novels ideas as flexible exchange rates, a private dimension of Social Security, tuition vouchers ... and a flat income tax ... and that when Friedman began arguing the case, most nations had top tax rates of at least 90 percent (91 percent in America). Today most top rates are 50 percent or less, so that the world has moved far toward Friedman's position."
Doesn't Will realize that his exaltation of the lowering of the top tax rates is exactly what the phrase "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" means? Doesn't Will realize that Friedman's paradigm has contributed to our country's widening economic gap, which has not been seen since the Gilded Age and the Roaring '20s? Doesn't Will realize that Friedman's economics, carried to '90s corporate-greed extremes (huge monopolistic mergers and executive malfeasance), is destroying our middle class?
Barbara Ann Galler
Redmond
A little poking around in google reveals that Mrs. Galler is a teacher. Don't you feel safer knowing that our children's education is in her capable hands?
posted on July 22, 2002 05:01 PM
