Show Us The Thanks

To the Editor:

The decision to raise taxes must be very hard because you become unpopular to those who must dig deeper when there is no deeper. You do become popular to those who benefit. That decision is nowhere near as hard as it is to earn that money for many of us. The easy answer is to force homeowners to pay more without regard for their financial situations, be they working or retired. Some face leaving friends and support systems because they can no longer afford the increases.

I’ve heard stories of towns and schools being creative with children doing fundraisers to help pay for their supplies. Shouldn’t they have a part in learning to help? Consider that a learning experience and sharing the burden of the cost for their education too, instead of expecting it from others’ hard work.

Instead of trips to Europe, students should be going to businesses to learn how hard it is to start them, especially now, how hard it is to keep them going and that without them, that college education isn’t going to get them very much. With businesses either going overseas or cutting back, what do they do with an academic education but no skills that many jobs require. Businesses are too often maligned for being too profitable, creating traffic problems, etc. But they become very important when others look to them for campaign contributions, charitable donations, taxes, and the all-important jobs everyone likes to find. You don’t succeed in life with merely an academic education, but from a variety of sources outside of school and many that never cost as much.

Each generation’s children are held up by educators and politicians as the future of the country. Nothing else matters, just children and that image, when it comes to raising money for campaigns and school taxes. But then living your goals and dreams becomes reality and so do those taxes. And who generates all the money for taxes? Who provides the future you hope for? Not the educators or the politicians or the government, but those of us with the fortitude and savvy and dedication it takes, and often doing without, to start a business — the ones you apply to for a job and come to rely on for income, benefits, and the ability to pay taxes. Taxes for services and schools where you end up living and dare to vote No to tax hikes, not because you don’t value education, but simply because it is a financial hardship.

Will we now be seeing letters of gratitude to all of us doing the digging or just letters telling us to move somewhere else? Or some goodbyes from those who demanded the increases but don’t mind leaving for job opportunities elsewhere.

Without business, what can you do with that college degree except frame it?

Barbara Field

Serenity Lane, Sandy Hook                                               June 9, 2010