I thank Mr. Angelo Lynn for his editorial “Democrats radical ideas versus GOP’s trickle-down theory” (Independent July 7, 2016). His editorial delineates how democrats are forever the optimists, while the GOP prefers the “trickle-down theory,” where life revolves around the wealthy in the hopes that it somehow will drip down to the rest of us in the middle and on the bottom. As Mr. Lynn duly noted, this theory takes inordinate advantage of how capitalism favors the wealthy to begin with.
This has been the GOP’s mantra since the reign of Ronald Reagan. It has given us the largest transfer of wealth from the bottom and the middle to the top in history, continual budget deficits and a Great Recession that nearly melted the world’s economy. As Mr. Lynn said, it also moved “the U.S. from the world’s largest international creditor to the world’s largest debtor nation.”
The Democrats’ radical ideas are no more radical than that in a democracy all citizens should be included in it. There are states in this country where this seems like a strange notion in America, though Vermont is not one of them thanks to the can-do, want-to-do spirit of the Democrats. As Mr. Lynn said of Democrats, “They are doers, intent on making Vermont stronger, healthier, wealthier and smarter.” Given the shenanigans and vicissitudes of our political system, such as it is, the Democrats sometimes stumble and fall short of the goal. At least, however, the party that brought us Medicare and Social Security, among so many others, is willing to keep hammering away at it.
For this we all should be eternally grateful.
Walter Carpenter
Montpelier, Vermont