Letters

Higher home prices shouldn't mean high taxes

Can you explain to me the logic in doubling my property taxes simply because my house has doubled in price? ["A Tale of Two Petitions," Editor's Note, May 27]. Will I get twice as much for my money? Will I get twice as many roads? Twice as many cops patrolling my area? Twice as many schools? No, no and no. So why in the world should I pay twice as much? The answer is so the government bureaucracy can double, hire twice as many employees and essentially waste twice the money.

Also, as far as the minimum wage goes, yes, California and Orgeon have high

minimum wages. Do you think it is a coincidence that those two states also

have the highest unemplyment rates in the country? But then again, socialists don't bother with pesky "facts."

--Eduard Dordea

Property tax rollback wouldn't help rich only

Geoff Schumacher, in his "A Tale of Two Petitions," asserts that the Sharron Angle property tax rollback petition will "make life better for the rich," while the Nevada AFL-CIO's proposed amendment to raise the minimum wage will "make life better for the poor."

No doubt some rich people will benefit if less of their money goes to the government, but Schumacher evidently thinks that only rich people own homes.

According to the Las Vegas Perspective, over 64 percent of valley residents own their homes. The median household income of these homeowners is right around $60,000, per the Perspective. Does a household with a couple making $30,000 each qualify as rich in Schumacher's eyes?

Ms. Angle's petition is aimed at seniors who have chosen to enjoy retirement in Nevada. Over 70 percent of retirees own their homes, with the median retiree household income being just over $36,000. It doesn't sound like too many Las Vegas retirees are going to make the Forbes 400 list.

But Mr. Schumacher believes that all homeowners are rich and that these greedy property owners who will support the Angle petition "could put the state in an agonizing bind" if the petition were to pass. The fact of the matter is that only a small percentage of homeowners are wealthy and that escalating property taxes are putting many of them, especially those on a fixed income, in a financial bind.

Schumacher writes dramatically that a "significant segment of Nevada's work force--the AFL-CIO estimates 50,000 people--is coming home from an exhausting eight-hour shift having earned $41.20--minus taxes." First of all, 50,000, or about 5 percent of the state's work force, cannot be defined as significant. Most likely, these are high school kids earning pocket money and developing job skills. And what condition they are in after work is unknown.

If the price of labor is set higher than an individual worker can produce, then that job will be eliminated. Thus, if a worker's output is less than the $6.15 that the AFL-CIO wants the minimum wage raised to, that worker will be fired.

The union's motives are easy to understand: eliminating competition from younger workers decreases supply in the labor market and pushes up union wages. But Schumacher makes noise that he wants to help the poor. Raising the minimum wage hurts the poor--especially young minority workers--by eliminating entry-level jobs.

It is jobs that eliminate poverty, not high taxes and government price controls on labor.

--Doug French

Clear Channel is all about control, not choice

I found the official Clear Channel Communications response to your article regarding liberal talk show hosts to be quite laughable ["Clear Channel Doesn't Have Political Bent," Letters, May 27]. Not so much for the part about not having a political agenda but the part about Clear Channel giving people what they want to hear. If anyone believes Clear Channel's response, they ought to revisit the PBS investigative report and Salon.com's "Radio's Big Bully" series concerning Clear Channel's control of nearly all radio programming content in the U.S. One might also look at some of the hearings done by the FCC as well as Congress last year concerning the radio industry and Clear Channel's control of it. Clear Channel's control of most concerts and billboard advertising also solidifies more of what you see and hear.

Clear Channel now controls the music industry in this country by owning most of the radio stations in large and medium marketing areas. You only hear what they approve of and they make sure that musicians do things with Clear Channel's interests in mind, not the public's. Since this is standard operating procedure at Clear Channel, it would not surprise me that they would also want to control political speech.

--Gary Taylor,

Tucson, Ariz.