Who’ll pay off the deficit? OK, let’s see.

I can save up to $400 per year in taxes if I make less than $250,000 a year. What will that do for me? My auto insurance cost more than that, my health insurance is 10 times that, my own owner insurance is double that and I assure you I make a lot, lot, lot less than that.

We were told back in the ’80s by God himself (Ronald Reagan) that if we made the rich wealthier, it would “truckle down.” Yeah, right!

I could afford to buy a new “American” car every 4-5 years before that. I could afford a decent home financed back then. Health insurance? Almost every manufacturer in America provided 100 percent (no deductible) health insurance back then (and even if you paid out of your pocket it was affordable on $10,000-$15,000 a year).

Now you’ve got pro basketball players who make more in one day than the average Idahoan makes in a year. Doctors, lawyers, Wall Street fat cats, brokerage firms, oil company executives, etc., etc., who don’t blink an eye at spending $3 or $4 million a year for lifestyles that I can’t even conceive of, and that would only be if I won a big lottery.

Here’s what it comes down to. How much is enough personal wealth? Can you possibly spend the outrageous amounts some of these people make? I’m not saying they should support the poor (but certainly not the opposite with the poor providing for them). All I’m saying is instead of spending their wealth on foreign investments, how about spending some in the good old USA? Of course that would be “Trickle Down,” and I’ll believe it when I see it.

PAUL UNDERWOOD

Saint Maries