Slowly over the last 40 years we have built an economic structure that
accepts that a significant fraction of working people, as high as 50
percent depending on the calculation, do not earn a wage that can
support housing, food and other basic needs for their family. In
providing low-cost goods and services to the rest of us, they have
subsidized the lifestyle to which we have grown accustomed. This state
has put together programs that have performed very well to respond to
the needs of our citizens that walk the edge of catastrophe on a daily
basis.
This is not charity. It is the moral response of a democratic people
that knows our economic system depends on under-valuing the honest work
of those at the bottom of the pay scale. It is not "socialist doggerel"
that the wealthy have gotten rich on the backs of the poor. It is the
truth. It is our humane and just response to provide support for the
most vulnerable among us, the elderly, the young, and those unable to
work. I can hear many reading this shouting out, "I have worked hard
for what I have. I deserve everything I have earned."
By luck of birth, health, the good fortune of the right time and place,
many of us have worked hard and earned more than others. Only an
unhealthy society would allow us to enjoy more and more comfort and
frills while our neighbors cannot enjoy the very basic needs of human
life -- food, shelter, warmth, health. The Legislature and the governor
are locked in a battle over providing adequate support to our most
vulnerable citizens and deciding how to pay for it.
The governor wants to court new businesses from out of state with
high-price-tag executives, sheltering the upper tax brackets from
increases. He wants to slash the state payroll by eliminating the jobs
of hundreds of our neighbors, throwing them into the pool of people
needing services and no longer paying taxes. The budget passed by the
Legislature reduces taxes for low- and middle-income tax brackets,
preserves jobs and attempts to preserve the increasingly strained
safety net for those tumbling off the edge during this deep recession.
Please call your legislators. Give them your support to stay firm on
their proposed budget plan.
Beth Ann Maier M.D.
Waterbury
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