LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Space station a Putin trump card
3/23/2014If the behavior of the Obama Administration and Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to escalate, who will take our astronauts to and return them from the International Space Station (“Keep heat on Russia,” editorial, March 18)?
We have spent billions of dollars on that project and we have no way to get our astronauts there other than on Russian spacecraft. That’s a trump card for Mr. Putin.
KEN BENJAMIN
Port Clinton
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What does it take to be called ‘rich’?
Blade Editor David Kushma made a statement in his March 16 op-ed column, “Forget income tax cut; keep tobacco, fracking levies,” about a tax cut benefiting “rich Ohioans.” That got me wondering whether “rich” can be quantified.
People who appear on the Forbes magazine list of the wealthiest people in the world are rich, but what kind of assets or income does it take to be a rich Ohioan or a rich American? Government doesn’t seem to have a problem defining poor people (whose income is below the official poverty level), so why can’t they establish criteria for being rich?
A poor person probably thinks that anyone who makes more than $100,000 a year and lives in a house with more than one bathroom and a two-car garage is rich. I doubt that billionaire Warren Buffett would agree, so maybe “rich” just isn’t definable.
DON DECKER
Holland, Ohio
Wealth by itself doesn’t add jobs
It is amusing to read arguments that millionaires and billionaires don’t create jobs ("What’s good for the 1 percent isn’t good for America," op-ed column, March 17). Wealth in and of itself doesn’t always create jobs.
Businesses create jobs. A lot of risk is incurred when a business begins an expansion program that includes hiring employees.
If a business faces obtuse regulations and high taxes, it will rarely expand. Why should it take a risk?
When the economic climate appears to be accommodating, a business will grow and hire people. Often the owner of that business becomes wealthy. Imagine that.
BRETT MENTZER
Kimberly Drive