Letters

Don’t cut it

Thomas Thwait’s book, “Toaster Project” about building a toaster from scratch, is a great illustration of what a bright, motivated, hard working individual entrepreneur can accomplish. He mines for and produces his own steel, makes plastic from oil, smelts copper for electrical wire, and for thousands of dollars in about nine months, produces something resembling a toaster.

It won’t make toast and just might electrocute you, though.

The point? Without the foundation provided by our whole society, past and present, individual talent and hard work just don’t cut it in an advanced society. We’ve inherited from past generations a huge store of knowledge, technology, infrastructure, educational, legal and social systems, paid for with their blood, sweat, tears and taxes. We would be ingrates if we don’t pay it forward.

A mistaken overemphasis on rugged individualism tempts us to resist chipping in through taxes to pay for education, research and development, roads and bridges, all those things our individual businesses can’t afford to pay for separately. These are the foundation on which our current and future individual successes are built, ask Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, Sr.

We are all in this together and that ain’t socialism. Until we recognize this, we’re ungratefully “hoisting a cherry to the top of an already existing sundae—and then laying claim to the entire ice cream parlor,” to quote Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Nickeled and Dimed.”

Karen Swoope,

Colfax