People in the middle class benefit greatly from government services in relation to the taxes they pay. Consider if we all had to hire private security, pay for our children’s private schools or tutors, build and maintain our own roads and finance our own sanitation systems in town. It would not be cheap. We simply cannot pay for services individually for the same price that honest and efficient government can provide them in bulk.

If we want to support the middle class and expand its ranks, we should remove financial barriers to wedlock (i.e.: create jobs) so people are confident they can maintain a household together, help more people send themselves and their kids to college and help people obtain mortgages for homes they can afford. Government programs that expand the middle class are not a handout, they are a contract. When people “make it,” then they give back by paying taxes. Freedom is never free, right?

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

Albert Lea