Letters to the editor for Friday, March 20

I thought chief executive Edward Liddy made a persuasive case for retaining the folks at AIG so they could clean up their messes. And of course they ought to be paid for their work. How about $12.03 an hour? That's the median wage for hourly workers in New York. Seems fair to me.

CHERI REGISTER, MINNEAPOLIS

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President Obama is the typical politician. He's a hypocrite. He expresses great outrage at the $160 million AIG retention bonuses, but he's OK with the $7 billion to $8 billion of earmarks in the latest budget. We taxpayers are on the hook for both of these giveaways. He should be angry at both of these situations.

GERALD AGRIMSON, STILLWATER

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Wow! Let's thank the AIG bigwigs for "some" of them giving back "half" of their bonuses! Are you for real?

JASON HANSMANN, ST. BONIFACIUS

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I'm a little surprised at the anger expressed toward one company in regard to its use of the federal bailout money. While I am frustrated with my hard-earned dollars going to pay million-dollar bonuses to poorly performing businesspeople, I expect other companies that are recipients of this money are doing similar things with it unless the money came with specific, verifiable restrictions. So far most other companies are keeping that a secret.

I think Americans' disgust should more appropriately be directed toward Congress and both presidents who knowingly appropriated this money to businesses that had already proven their inability to manage their business wisely.

DALE HALVORSEN, APPLE VALLEY

DAVID WATERBURY, MINNEAPOLIS

In Lori Sturdevant's March 15 column, there is mention made of a provision in a tax reform bill recently introduced by DFL Sen. Ann Rest that would return the state income tax rate to 1990s levels for filers earning more than $250,000 a year. Sturdevant expressed her support for this change because "it corrects an imbalance in which high-income Minnesotans pay a lower effective tax rate than middle earners do."

Advocates of this should stop looking at misleading indicators such as the comparison of effective tax rates across income levels. Instead, they should look at the most accurate measure of the "fairness" or "balance" of a tax system -- a comparison of the taxes paid by income level relative to the payments/subsidies/benefits received from the government.

According to a March 2007 Tax Foundation study, for every dollar of income tax paid by the top 20 percent of income earners, only 41 cents is returned to them in the form of government payments/subsidies/benefits. For every dollar of taxes paid in by income earners in the lowest 20 percent bracket, $8.21 is returned to them in the form of government payments/subsidies/benefits.

How is the tax system is "unbalanced" in favor of the wealthy when it results in them realizing a 60 percent loss on every tax dollar that they are forced to pay?

According to statistics reported in the media, approximately 20 percent of the adult population uses tobacco, more than 20 percent are obese and a significantly higher percentage consume alcohol. While tobacco, high-cholesterol food items and alcohol can each be detrimental to an individual's health and financially impact the general community, only tobacco users are singled out with "health impact" taxes. Why not also place additional taxes on alcohol and food items that have little or no nutritional value?

Full disclosure: I stopped drinking alcohol 34 years ago, I use tobacco products and I have a 6'0" frame with 195 pounds. This letter was prompted by the recent study on obesity.