Weights of our tax burden

THE ANTI-GOVERNMENT forces seem to have the healthcare and pension benefits of public workers in their sights.

In her Sept. 26 letter "Debt and taxes," Barbara Anderson attacks "a government system that exists to take unusually good care of itself instead of providing good services." I guess that means that our police officers, firefighters, public school teachers, professors, road crews, and others all do a lousy job.

Of course taxes, especially the property tax, are burdensome to the average person. One solution proposed by Governor Patrick was to close corporate tax loopholes, spreading the burden in a fairer way. But that received little support in the Legislature.

As for the decent benefits of state workers, hard-won through the years, we should consider that these benefits attract quality people to stressful jobs, such as teaching and police work.

The solution is not to lower us all to the shark-like standards of the private sector, but to insure decent benefits for all workers.

SUSAN JHIRAD
Medford

BARBARA ANDERSON'S letter was right on.

We taxpayers who work in the private sector are seeing our health insurance premiums rising (while coverage decreases), and our hard-earned pensions disappearing as companies go under and the plans are raided. But we continue to pay higher and higher taxes to fund public sector employees' health insurance and pension plans.

Government reform should be a priority, and public employees need to pay a larger share toward their benefits, just as we in the private sector do.

I've worked in the private sector for more than 40 years, and will never retire with the kind of benefits that many people who have worked for the government will have amassed with only half the years worked.

L. SLESINGER
Revere

I WOULD like to offer a truce for Barbara Anderson ("Debt and taxes," Letters, Sept. 26) and Joan Vennochi ("Let the people pick their poison," Op-ed, Sept. 23). If we shifted our focus on taxes, they might both get what they want.

I propose we suspend debate on the issue of how much the state taxes until we resolve a more important concern: who pays taxes. Massachusetts has a regressive tax structure. We are taking money from the poor and handing it over to the rich.

If wealthy people started paying their fair share, I suspect Ms. Anderson would find some powerful allies in her desire to achieve "good results" through government reform. Not only could we let people pick their poison, we could let them pick their antidote.

A fairer tax system - now, that would really make a "perfect ballot question."

JOHN EDWARD
Chelmsford

The writer is an adjunct economics professor at Bentley College.