Targeted increase is a bad idea for Idaho

“Idaho must consider targeted tax increase,” proposes Bob Wynhausen. A five percent tax increase proposed by Democrat legislator Shirley Ringo was tagged by the governor as class warfare. If you draw a line through the middle of our taxpayers and say all the above get a tax increase and all below do not, that is definitely class warfare. Bob goes on to say the governor “doesn’t want to go to war with his supporters among the wealthy and business classes.” I can understand his envy of  “ the wealthy,” we have so many roaring around Sandpoint in their black Rolls Royces, but I don’t get what Bob has against “business classes.” Does that mean our local shop keepers, our building contractors or does that mean the two kids who pooled their money to buy shovels so they could clean sidewalks of snow? These are all business classes, Bob.

Then we have the quotes about Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman (Nobel laureates). We just received a stiff reminder of the quality of Nobel Awards. This quote goes on to say “in a recession, cutting spending can do more harm than raising taxes. Admitting that taxes do harm, but that is exactly what he is promoting. “ So the real problem is that our leaders are unwilling to tax those that can afford it for programs for those much less fortunate.”

A flowery phrase that in plain language means, “from those of means to those of need.” That phrase along with class warfare and targeted punitive tax increases are right out of the Communist Manifesto. Bob, communism has been road tested for hundreds of years, most recently by the USSR and communist China, with hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered while trying to force feed this cruel ideology. It simply doesn’t work. You are definitely right about one thing. The Legislature must seriously consider a targeted tax increase and then unanimously defeat it.

DALE ROBERTSON

Laclede