In Response to: Deficit disorder

After reading about elitist deficit hawks in your last issue (cover story, April 6), I was relieved that very little was said on two subjects: ending all military adventurism worldwide, and making the wealthy and their corporations pay their fair share of taxes; and I was happy that Paul Krugman’s ideas were given only one paragraph. After all, what’s a Nobel Prize worth?

Also, I was pleased to read of some of your experts’ approval of the Ryan plan for two reasons: It shows proper contempt for the poor (formerly quaintly called “the middle class”) and the old among us; and its math isn’t quite as fuzzy as many critics say. Not quite.

Still, I suppose that very few — almost none of us conceivably belonging to the “welfare class” — need concern ourselves with such socially unattractive matters. Now hold my mint julep, will you, while I bust another union and tell the lesser among us to tighten their belts. After all, they shouldn’t live forever.

R.E. Stratton ’60