To the Editor:
About half of Dartmouth students receive no financial aid at all. Only 44.1 percent of members of the Class of 2008 receive financial aid (The Dartmouth, September 10) That means that their families pay $40,000 a year to send their children to school. I'd suppose that at least half of those families are pretty comfortable in paying those huge checks, meaning their family incomes start at around $150,000 a year. Out of those families, some are multimillionaires which skew the average income of the top quarter of families to probably around $250,000 or more. With the Bush administration's socially perverted tax policies, those families are getting five-figure tax cuts every year -- essentially more than they know what to do with.
Look around Collis or the dorm and pick four kids randomly. One out the four kids' family is getting an extra $10,000 or more every year. What happens to that tax cut? It may be invested by some large financier who is pillaging Third World financial markets; it may be buying a brand shiny new car; it may be paying to furnish the home theater with top of the line Swedish speakers; it may be purchasing a piece of art. Most of those families know that they don't need or deserve that tax cut; it just so happens that they conveniently forget that they ever were given and spend them like any other income.
I urge you, if you are in one of those families, to try to persuade your parents to spend the money elsewhere than day to day life. Remind them that $10,000 will make no meaningful difference in lives of the wealthy, but there are a billion people out there that live on less than $1 a day. Silk carpets don't feel as nice as meals after starvation. It is surprising how much influence can be exercised on parents with the right choice of words. Everyone has a special cause -- my own is AIDS in Africa -- that they really care about. It could be religiously-affiliated charity work, aid to struggling students in third world countries, or research for Parkinson's disease. It doesn't matter which one because all of those have benefits to society as a whole. Contribute to a non-partisan cause and better the lives of people everywhere.
Probably more than ten million dollars worth of tax cuts are circulating through the Dartmouth community right now. Battle the parents about it, urge rich friends if you're comfortable, talk to rich relatives -- it's time to start asking where that money is going.
