BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Dear Scott:

Thanks for giving me all these examples of what a billion is. And also thanks for reminding me about all the taxes I might pay if I had any money , liked to go fishing, or were in certain businesses.

But when you tell me that that things were better 100 years ago, and that mothers stayed home and watched the children, I ask you--was that in a beach front apartment at Southpoint or the Hermitage? Are you saying that our grandparents and parents had an easier life than we have?

Did they live on the beach and go out for dinner 4 or 5 times a week? Did your grandparents even have a telephone on which to press 1 for English? Did they take vacations, go to Europe, go on cruises? Did they collect social security checks and did they have medical insurance or Medicare?

One hundred years ago was 1908. The 16th Amendment authorizing the income tax was passed in 1913. Before that we had an income tax during the Civil War and during the Spanish American War.

One hundred years ago we still had the 60 or even 72 hour week, there was no Workmans' Compensation, Child Labor Laws were far in the future, people lived in tenements without plumbing. Many of our grandparents and great-grandparents worked in sweatshops six days a week and seven days during the season--that meant both mother and father. Piece work was taken home where all the family worked on it including five year olds. None of them had tax problems.

If you worked on the railroad and in most other industries, and had an accident you were merely dropped from the payroll. There was no sick pay and no paid holidays. No one even heard of vacations. Children died from bad milk, tuberculosis was rampant, the streets reeked with garbage, and most people were crammed four, five and six in two rooms. The toilets (outhouses) were still in the backyards of the Lower East Side. But there were no tax problems.

It's hard to believe but many Jewish women turned to prostitution. Yes, don't say no. They didn't pay taxes either.

Newspapers were published in dozens of immigrant languages because most immigrants didn't speak English. Not only didn't they speak English, but also they paid no taxes.

Do you really think that things were better when all the taxes that were enumerated didn't exist?

Here's what my grandfather had to say about taxes when I complained to him about all the deductions on my paycheck:

"Michael, in Russia there were no taxes. We paid nothing. But every spring the mud was up to our knees--and that was INSIDE the house. ...Here there's no mud--so pay your taxes and stop your whining."


Mike