Missing Out in a Richer America

Re “If America Is Richer, Why Are Its Families So Much Less Secure?” Oct. 10: Thank you for your illuminating and maddening article about the ground lost by working people in the U.S. since the late 1970s. It precisely describes the increased uncertainty of workers, falling incomes, lost benefits and eviscerated social safety nets, as well as the exploding salaries and security of those at the top.

What is also relevant and not mentioned by your article is that, while workers’ benefits and salaries have fallen, their real share of the tax burden has increased: The income tax has been radically altered to favor the rich, and taxes that workers pay more of or are affected more by, such as Social Security and sales taxes, have stayed the same or increased.

Conversely, the top earners, whose incomes have exploded, have also enjoyed huge reductions in their tax burden.

If we mention these facts, we’re accused of class warfare by free-market advocates and conservatives, and yet it is they who have been waging and winning class war since the late 1970s. When are working people going to wake up and start demanding government that works in their interests, instead of only for the interests of big business and the top 1% of earners?

Alex Murray

Altadena

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In 1992, I was in my early 20s, had no college education and made $25,000 a year with medical benefits as a clerk. I worked 40 hours a week.

Now, I’m 38 with a master’s degree in computer science. As an adjunct professor with a full-time load at a private university, I make $20,000 a year without medical benefits. I work 60 hours a week. And President Bush thinks outsourcing of jobs to India and China is good for the American people.

Michelle Villar

Yorba Linda

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Peter G. Gosselin and The Times deserve a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the truth about a free-market society. The moving lessons that emerge about the cost of social Darwinism for real people, nevertheless, are being downplayed by those intent on establishing an oligarchy.

The latest evidence in this regard pertains to efforts to apply free-market principles to public schools, which arguably constitute the last vestige of democratization. Unfortunately, by the time the public wakes up, it will be too late to undo the irreparable harm to a generation of children.

Walt Gardner

Los Angeles