Re: “To fight inequality, invest in fairness — Let’s use money to lift the poor and recover the dignity of work,” by Peter Johnson, Thursday Opinion.
Thank you for sharing your opinion with us, Mr. Johnson. If you’d like to add a “t” to your name, I welcome you to my family!
Poverty exists because we let it exist. As you say, there should be plenty to go around, but we choose not to share it fairly. One way is to use a part of our tax revenue to help those who need it, but that doesn’t solve the cause of the problem.
Nearly everyone works hard for the wages they get, but they are underpaid. They can’t afford the health insurance they need, they can’t save for emergencies, they can’t afford decent housing and they barely have enough income to feed their families.
Everyone complains about the rising cost of living and increases in taxes. If we support families with tax dollars, and still complain about high taxes, we still have a problem.
What if every employer started each new employee with a wage that covered basic necessities? Still not enough. Health care is out of sight, unless we pool our resources to cover basic health care.
Employers have more leverage than individuals. We deserve better. We can do it.
Ray Johnston, Heath
Wealth equality is confiscation
Inequality does not imply unfairness. Certainly, the work and pay of a ditch digger or a carhop are not equal to that of a doctor. The doctor’s work is of much higher value as is viewed by society. It is certainly not equal.
The value of work is determined by its value to society, not by the needs of the individual performing the work. If an individual wishes to work in a higher value line, then he must use his intelligence and gumption to prepare himself, whatever the difficulties, to work in that higher value line.
This op-ed by Johnson notes that the top 10% of U.S. households own 67% of the nation’s wealth. While that may be true, it overlooks the fact that they pay a vastly higher portion of all taxes and have acquired that wealth through high-value work or inheritance from someone who did.
It’s not fairness to speak of equality of wealth. It is confiscation, which is just a big word for stealing, and that’s not justice or fairness in any regard.
Clifford R. Holliday, Colleyville
National service one solution
Johnson says reform will take courage to tell the truth about poverty, racism and greed. As a people we are separated. Separation breeds suspicion, fear and lack of trust. People bond over shared experiences.
Journalist Mark Shields before retiring from PBS NewsHour said, “I think national service is a great Americanizing experience.”
National service would bring people in contact with citizens unlike themselves and in that coming together understanding and tolerance might be experienced.
When I was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base during the Vietnam War, I served with 25 to 30 other physicians who were from all parts of the country. We were thrown together in an environment that none of us had chosen. Strangers, we learned not only about medicine but also about each other. We had different views on religion, politics and society. We could have spent two years together arguing our differences. But the respect and tolerance we developed through familiarity made us better people, better citizens, seeking understanding, not judgment.
Sacrifice in the form of required national service may be a pipe dream, but I believe it is a way to bring us together.
David A. Haymes, Dallas/Forest Lake
UT, reject federal strings
Re: “Funding offer to UT has strings — White House says Austin campus must match fed priorities,” Oct. 3 news story.
It’s dismaying to read of the University of Texas board of regents Chairman Kevin Eltife’s apparent eagerness to embrace government censorship. The same White House offering preferential access to funds has gutted Voice of America, shuttered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, seized control of the Kennedy Center, sought to silence comedians, pressured law firms into acquiescence, entangled broadcasters in frivolous litigation, censored exhibits in the Smithsonian and even altered messaging in the National Park system.
Asking yourself how Eltife would react if President Joe Biden extended this offer tells you all you need to know.
Firing professors for class discussions or even demanding equal time for conservative ideas is a betrayal of academia. Astrology and astronomy don’t get equal time. Neither do alchemy and chemistry, polygenism and anthropology, creation science and evolution, or climate denialism and global warming theory.
Ideas that fail a standard of proof are discarded. A good professor makes students squirm in their chairs as biases wither under scrutiny.
Eltife, tell Trump he can keep his money. Let Texas be a First Amendment sanctuary.
Ken Duble, Dallas/The Cedars
Trump’s war on California
President Donald Trump has waged a war on universities and has a particular hatred for California and the West Coast in general. Of the three 2025 Nobel Prize winners for physics, all are associated with California universities.
Of the three winners for medicine, one is associated with a California university and another is from Seattle.
Of the three chemistry winners, one is from California.
The government-funded university grant programs are held hostage by the Trump administration surely because of the West Coast’s Democratic leanings. A secondary motivation is pushing the culture war agenda. How sad.
Jim Wells, Irving
New Mexico welcomes troops
There’s such controversy about the president forcing National Guard troops on Democrat cities, yet we hear little about the welcome cooperation the guard has with Albuquerque police. New Mexico is being smart — the guard’s help frees the police to focus on apprehension and reduce crime.
Dwight Bartholomew, Northeast Dallas