Income Disparities

Re “Report Exaggerates Income Inequality,” Commentary, Oct. 7: With only a couple more rounds of number twisting it should be possible to show that the top one-fifth of income earners actually earn less than the people at the bottom.

Why not subtract overhead? Let’s see now, there is the mortgage payment at $9,000 per month, car payments on the Cadillac and Beemer at $1,500 per month, country club dues, housekeeper, nanny, gardener, and the list goes on. Of course, the mortgage is tax deductible, the cars are used for business, the country club dues are essential for contacts with clients and it is absolutely vital to have domestic help when you have a 10-bedroom mansion on a two-acre lot.

My question is, when will the rich people finally have enough?

JOHN L. WILKERSON

Torrance

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According to Robert Rector and Rea Hederman, all the poor have to do is get married and get jobs and the gap between the haves and have-nots will narrow.

The facts speak for themselves. The gap widens year after year. Minimum wage is not a livable wage. While more people have jobs this year, why is it that even more now go without medical coverage? Solutions are often balanced at the expense of middle/two-income families, who live in fear that if one of them gets laid off it will send them falling to the other side.

The rich conservatives who fund the Heritage Foundation ought to lay off these two if this is the best they can come up with. Maybe from this new perspective they can reconsider their conclusions.

MICHAEL A. McNAMARA

Sylmar

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Liberals referred to Ronald Reagan’s administration as “the decade of greed,” when the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Unfortunately, the poor are still getting poorer, only the liberals are putting a different spin on things. From 1990 to 1998, under Bill Clinton, the household income of the lowest quintile declined from 3.9% to 3.6%; the second lowest declined from 9.6% to 9.0%; the middle quintile declined from 15.9% to 15.0%. Economic conditions reviled under President Reagan are now spun as, “The economy’s in good shape.” The liberal bias of the media is shameful.

JOHN JAEGER

Irvine