To the Editor:
In his anguished try to put the nation’s woes on the doorstep of progressives, David Brooks ignores the one best creation of inequality within the U.S. right now — the tax code. Progressives didn’t go the Reagan tax cuts of 1981, nor the Bush tax cuts of 2001, nor the Trump tax cuts of 2017, which have shifted monumental wealth from the center class to the very rich — a shift that exhibits no indicators of abating anytime quickly.
The financial divide on this nation has not been unwittingly created. The divide is the results of concerted effort by a grasping class, not the educated class. The educated class, although, has been higher at navigating the ensuing system than the working class, an impact that the rich class has used to divide and conquer to insure that the educated and dealing lessons don’t lastly work collectively to create a extra simply society.
John Q. Gale
Hartford, Conn.
The author is a member of the Hartford Metropolis Council.
To the Editor:
I hardly know methods to start to specific my deep discomfort with David Brooks’s column. On its floor, it seems to be a reasoned critique of elite wokeness. However beneath it, all through, there’s a contempt for these at prestigious universities who maintain liberal or progressive values — which, to me, interprets right into a deep empathy for the poor, the underprivileged and the wretched of the earth.
Right here’s an instance, when he writes: “Think about you’re a social justice-oriented scholar or a radical sociologist, however you attend or work at a college with a $50 billion endowment, immense social energy and the flexibility to reject about 95 p.c of the individuals who apply. For years or a long time, you labored your tail off to get into probably the most unique aeries in American life, however now you’ve obtained to show, to your self and others, that you simply’re on the aspect of the oppressed.”
That’s simply so denigrating and unfairly disrespectful of anybody who made it to a first-rate college, and whose wonderful schooling has then led them to determine with and/or actually really feel the ache of the poor, the marginalized and people crushed by the highly effective.
