It is good to see the Maine Legislature and local communities address the housing crisis. Crisis: “An unstable or crucial time.” For Maine residents who earn too little to meet their housing, food and other essential needs, this crisis is their daily experience, as it is for millions of other Americans.

Maine’s housing crisis has been exacerbated by COVID and other factors, and short-term relief is needed. The long-term structural problem is income inequality. MIT calculates that a family of four, with two adults working, needs $109,000, before taxes, to meet basic needs in Portland. Efforts to legislate hourly wages are well intentioned and important in demonstrating the public’s commitment to address income inequality. However, this strategy threatens the financial stability of our small businesses, and that helps no one.

Congress should raise corporate taxes and taxes on the very wealthy, eliminate corporate subsidies and tax loopholes. Trickle-down economics has never worked. Corporations have gotten more powerful and the wealthy have gotten richer. Do this and states would have the money to provide employment insurance directly to its residents to bring them up to a living wage, and unemployed insurance to those who cannot work.

Jo Myers
Waldoboro

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