OPINION:
Both “Boot camp, not benefits” and “When welfare beats work” (Web, Aug. 19) make good points: Welfare for the poor is expensive and too comfortable and it fosters mutual political dependence between recipients and government — and of course, we need to do something about the whole thing. True, but what about the welfare system for the professional class?
Let’s start with lawyers. As Charles Dickens observed, the first business of law is to make business for itself. Our Congress and statehouses are filled with a slime of lawyers who seem to make laws that are deliberately vague, complex and increasingly subject to interpretation by the executive branches and the political parties that control them.
As a consequence, we have a federal tax code that for 2014 consists of 74, 608 pages — which if printed would take up 12 feet of space on your bookshelf. To interpret and enforce the code requires an army of well-paid lawyers, accountants and civil servants. Do you think that Grover Norquist, Rand Paul or anyone else will succeed in simplifying this code when the well-being of so many upstanding citizens and their families is at stake?
The same applies to other civil and criminal laws, such as Dodd-Frank, FATCA and Obamacare, whose largesse is spread across an even wider range of professions. This includes the increasingly corrupt political class which has always extorted donations from the other professionals and has come to realize the raw power conferred by the arbitrary interpretation and enforcement of such laws. To resolve a problem, we need to address first the cause, not the symptom.
I find it difficult to rail against a welfare system for the poor when so many in the professional classes avail themselves of an analogous system that secures wealth and benefits beyond the reach and imagination of the middle class that pays for them in terms of time, taxes, prices and political control.
Let’s do something about both.
ROBERT MCKAY
Burke, Va.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.