The benefits of taxation

I think that the tea party should sit down and try to recall what this country was like 80 years ago and what we have now. They seem to think things were as they are today and that we don't need taxes to improve our standard of living.

Before the mid-1930s when Highway 25 was built (now U.S. 61) between Jackson and Festus, Mo., this was the first hard surfaced road through Perry County; the 110 miles from Jackson to St. Louis would take four to five hours, hoping you'd only have one flat tire; and this during dry weather, if it was wet, well then it was another story. Now it only takes two hours thanks to our road system. Before this, roads were constructed using the "Pole Tax," which meant that in order to vote you had to work one day constructing roads.

I also am thankful for the New Deal that in the 1930s the created the REA to put electricity in every house in the U.S. This took us out of the lamp age. In 1944 the GI Bill of Rights gave every serviceman a chance for education. This knowledge they got and put to work made the U.S. the envy of the world.

Now the tea party is trying to make the U.S. a third-class country by not wanting to pay a fair amount of taxes to keep what we have and to improve our standard of living.

VERNON GREBING, Frohna, Mo.