The infantilization of Nevada

To the editor:

In his Sunday column, Geoff Schumacher points his finger at the business community and all other no-tax ideologues, sternly lecturing that state and local governments in Nevada require more taxpayer money to provide services and now is the time to "embrace a mature solution to Nevada's fiscal roller coaster."

However, what Mr. Schumacher prescribes leads to the devolution of society, not "growing up."

The ultimate sources of civilization are voluntary exchange, production and private property -- just the opposite of what Mr. Schumacher pines for. As UNLV professor Hans Hoppe showed in his book "Democracy: The God That Failed," as governments grow and increasingly violate individual property rights, society's time-preference and individual time-preference schedules increase (people become more present-oriented). Instead of the natural tendency of people becoming more farsighted as they mature, these increased property rights violations (taxation) turn adults into children.

What Mr. Schumacher agitates for is the infantilization of Nevada, not the maturing of the state.

Doug French

LAS VEGAS

No more taxes

To the editor:

I have just finished reading Geoff Schumacher's Sunday column, "Let's grow up: Nevada needs more taxes." I would like to begin with the comment that Mr. Schumacher, university system Chancellor Jim Rogers, MGM Mirage CEO Terry Lanni, County Commission Chairman Rory Reid, Mayor Oscar Goodman, and the rest of the people who want to raise our taxes so that we can ruin a wonderful state should "grow up" themselves.

Surely the taxpayers of Nevada realize that we are being shoveled a pile of manure by these people.

Mr. Lanni wants to protect the Nevada sacred cow, the casinos. There is no question that the gaming industry is panicked by the thought that it will have to step up to the plate and fund more of our politicians' social expenditures. There is no question that the gaming industry wants to shift those taxes onto the general public.

I, for one, do not believe that we need any more taxes. First we should see some progress from our existing tax payments.

I know that this is a novel idea that the teachers union just can't understand. I know that the homeless advocates don't want to hear this, either. I know that the environmentalists don't want to listen. I guess no one who wants more tax dollars to spend wants to show us taxpayers what the previous tax increases have brought us. Poverty still exists, our schools are still failures, we still have homeless people wandering the streets, and so far there are few if any successes to be seen.

Nevada doesn't need more taxes. Nevada needs the existing taxes to be used for successful projects.

Bob Dubin

LAS VEGAS

Financial needs

To the editor:

In his Saturday letter on the gap between the rich and the middle class, Bill Miller thinks that the solution to his financial needs is to have some government toady ring his doorbell on a regular basis and hand him a check drawn on funds extracted via more taxation on the so-called "rich" who already pay far and away the bulk of the tax money collected by the federal treasury.

Here's an idea for Mr. Miller:

How about learning how to take advantage of all of the wonderful opportunities afforded to anybody in this country who has ambition, is willing to attend free public schools to actually learn something and is committed to hard work and self-discipline? Do this, or something like this, and the respect you seem to perceive as lacking for the "middle class" will become evident even to our society's slackers.

MICHAEL C. MAZE

LAS VEGAS

War games

To the editor:

In his Sunday column, Publisher Sherman Frederick makes the comment that "every candidate running for president on the Democrat side of the ballot is foursquare against the war. All of them want to bring the troops home as soon as possible."

Mr. Frederick may have missed it, but in a previous debate, each of the leading Democratic candidates (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards) made it clear that, if elected, none could promise to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of their first term, which would go through 2013.

So, just to reassure Mr. Frederick, the Bush administration will have done its job so well that the estimated $2 trillion tab on the Iraq occupation will continue apace under a Democratic administration. Besides, American taxpayers have not yet finished paying the $600 million mortgage on the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

But if Mr. Frederick wants to make sure the troops aren't brought home "before the job is done," there is a war in Afghanistan he should look into. (Remember that one?)

Jerry Villela

LAS VEGAS