OPINION:
The high overt and covert rates of taxation easily account for lowered American birth rates, since taxpayers can no longer finance large families for themselves when they are financing other peoples’ children and welfare through their taxes (“U.S. births hit a 30-year low, despite good economy,” Web, May 30). More children for welfare families and third-world immigrants who have their shelter, food, medicine, education, clothing, goods, etc., provided at the expense of the taxpayer whose children are never born. Call it the cowbird phenomenon. The cowbird pushes another bird’s eggs out of the nest and replaces them with her own eggs so the victim bird ends up raising another bird’s children while her own children lie as broken eggs under the nest.
Start with 18 percent in federal and state income taxes, add 20 percent of income paid for annual home property taxes; 6 percent in sales taxes, excise taxes for large purchases, oil and gas taxes, and another 20 percent in pass-through taxes on manufacturers since their taxes have to be bundled into the prices of finished goods and services. These taxes are about 64 percent of family income by themselves. Include price-fixing the cost of goods and services by the government and that goes up.
I’m sure there are more but these alone are enough to cripple family finances and convince people to put off births — or just put an end to them so there is enough money left to support their existing families.
The welfare state has its own demise built in, as it weakens the family and the state so it fades away or cannot protect itself from exterior forces.
EFRAIN COLON-GALLARDO
Annandale, Va.
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