Regarding the Jan. 15 letter about using the tax code for social engineering:
Reader Dennis Genetski suggests that is wrong for the Clinton administration to increase subsidies for child day care because his single-income family can’t take advantage of those additional subsidies.
I could go even further than Mr. Genetski. As part of a childless married couple, I could object to a tax credit for each child in a family. I subsidize that credit and have no way to take advantage of it if I don’t have children. What is that but social engineering, encouraging people to have more children through the tax code.
I pay school taxes that I will never use. I pay for parks that no children of mine will ever play in. On top of all that, my spouse and I pay a rather substantial marriage penalty for our combined income.
The point is that all people have special interests. If you only take into consideration your own interests and not that of society at large, you will never build anything, never solve any problems–your society will never be great. Only by joining to tackle problems can we even start to progress.
