Affluent must help stem ‘tide of federal red ink’

In response to the letter from Bill Millico, “Willie Sutton's philosophy holds no appeal for U.S.” (Sept. 20), I believe Mr. Sutton's philosophy was that it is OK to rob banks.

In response to the letter from Bill Millico, “Willie Sutton’s philosophy holds no appeal for U.S.” (Sept. 20), I believe Mr. Sutton’s philosophy was that it is OK to rob banks.

My letter (“Tax cuts should end for top-tier taxpayers” in the Sept. 6 issue) wasn’t written in support of that philosophy, which indeed — and I wish to go on record here — is one that I adamantly oppose.

Mr. Sutton’s famous statement — that he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is” — was not so much one of philosophy as physics. Flip it around, and you get another, perhaps less famous, saying: “You can’t get blood from a turnip.”

That was the point of my letter.

Mr. Millico suggested that I support “a political system … that most of us have no interest in importing to our nation.”

On the contrary, if my letter represented support for any political system, it would have to be the homegrown version that is in place in every state in the union. No state may run a fiscal deficit; it is “pay as you go” across the land.

The federal government isn’t so encumbered, yet eventually, all bills come due. Spending cuts alone won’t solve the problem.

Who will stem the tide of federal red ink if not “those who have financial resources”?

The laws of physics seem to dictate that there is no one else.

Neil Stoloff

Managing member

SweetSpot Investments LLC

Bloomfield, Mich.

Data used to support tax hikes are misleading

Neil Stoloff’s letter to the editor, “Tax cuts should end for the top-tier taxpayers” (Sept. 6) is an unfortunate example of the old adage, “If you torture data long enough, it’ll confess to anything.”

Although it may be true that more people are living paycheck to paycheck, implying that this increase over 2007 and 2008 is principally the result of some less-than-optimal allocation of wealth is at best a technically flawed post-hoc fallacy.

Having come out of one of the worst recessions in two generations, it is entirely likely that the tenuous economic environment between 2007 and 2010 has been at least a contributing factor in the increase in these statistics. To imply that such a correlation is evidence of causality would be intellectual malpractice.

Furthermore, the figure Mr. Stoloff used — 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy last year — is a rather startling fact. But compared with what?

Mr. Stoloff failed to mention that the same data to which he refers show that this number is about 30% less than the more than 2 million filings in 2005. In fact, bankruptcies for 2006 through 2008 were lower than all years back at least to 1995 when the article presents its first data point.

Although the data footnote indicates that the 2005 spike preceded tougher bankruptcy laws, one could reasonably argue that a portion of the difference was due to people taking advantage of bankruptcy laws to the detriment of creditors, the cost of which was naturally spread across the remainder of the more responsible bill-paying consumers.

The author of a July 15 businessinsider.com article, Michael Snyder, inquires, “What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor?” I think that this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes the United States unique.

Thanks to the likes of Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Bill Gates and innumerable others, access to information, education and opportunity has never been greater.

Here is a statistic for you: In 1978, the relatively new U.S. venture capital industry raised a total of $750 million.

Last year, U.S. venture capital alone crossed $20 billion. That is $20 billion in opportunities that flat out didn’t even exist 30 years ago.

Mr. Stoloff uses the analogy of robbing a bank because that is where the money is, right? His logic, unfortunately, shares the same moral equivalency.

It was Karl Marx who said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” There is a reason you have to open up a history book to read how that story ended.

Andrew E. Oster

President and chief executive

Oster Financial Group LLC

Ponca City, Okla.

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