LETTER: The American Ideal and the American Reality

By James C. Johnston Jr.

The American dream has been to get the best education or training for life that one can, get the best job that one can aspire to, and buy a home of your own. That is a wonderful dream, but in the reality of America in 2026, it is just a dream. The reality of home ownership is now an impossible dream for far too many people, some not so young, who make what used to be considered pretty good incomes. Even couples with two incomes are having a very hard time of it these days as the cost of oil rises to new heights, followed by food costs, and everything connected by economic tissue to the whole mess.

It is also a fact of life that the incomes of the richest individuals in this country are severely under-taxed, and it does not look as if the powers that be intend it ever to be otherwise. Working class and middle class Americans pay a share of taxes which is way out of proportion to what they earn. Many of the richest corporations pay little or nothing in income taxes, and they are protected by a president who regularly tells his “Paying Guests” at Mar-a-Lago that he has given them the biggest tax break ever. And when he says that, he is telling them the plain unvarnished truth. Not only is that extreme upper strata of society exempt from paying taxes, they are also exempt from following the laws governing human decency itself. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed of the very rich, ”They are different from you and me.”

The so-called Department of Justice seems to be covering up for the rich and privileged perpetrators of unspeakable crimes carried out on Little James Island under the rule of Jeffrey Epstein while men of privilege had their way with young girls of 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17. The names of these individuals have been redacted behind masses of ink that have blackened out whole pages of the Epstein Papers as released by Attorney General Pam Bondi and the United States Department of Justice while the names of many under-aged victims are identified in those self-same papers. What rank hypocrisy.

For sheer fun and games, go to your computer and look-up the net worth of all the members of Congress, You might be amazed, and then think about their unreported incomes and who gets all of the unspent money politically donated to them and kept by them as they leave office virtually untaxed. Whose interest do they serve?

What could be done to even-out the playing field just a bit? Well naturally I have a few modest suggestions. First of all, I think that only the first twenty thousand dollars in property tax on a primary residence should be tax deductible. Secondly, if an individual pays rent for his or her primary residence, up to twenty thousand dollars a year of that rent paid should be tax deductible.

Thirdly, the first twenty thousand dollars of a person’s income should be tax exempt. The poorest people in this country proportionately pay the most taxes, and this is strictly unfair in a free society based on the professed ideals of equity.

Child Care in this country is very expensive. There should be an allowable tax deduction allowed for childcare as it is necessary for persons who are employed outside the home. Fifty-percent of child care payments should be allowed for the care of the first child as a tax deduction, and twenty-five percent care expense deductions on each child in that household that follows.

A parent who stays at home to care for children should be allowed a family tax deduction of ten thousand dollars for the primary earner in that household or any other designated earner living in that household. The deduction should not, however, be prorated for any greater number of children.

These are just a few ideas that law makers can think about as they approach the problems of our evolving two class society of potential “Haves” and “Have Nots”. In the years to come, you might find your children among the renting class of well-educated “Have-Nots” making $150,000.00 or less a year! That may sound very strange, buts it’s not far off the mark. We live in a society where the dollar is shrinking and certain people, for example, are making billions with crypto currency which is made of air. We live in a very interesting time. I am now in my eighty-second year, and I know that I haven’t seen everything yet, and that my friends is very scary. What sort of country do you want your kids to live in?