Readers Write: Dec. 13

Trump right to slash Utah land protections

Congratulations to President Trump for overthrowing President Obama’s attempts to stop coal, oil, and natural gas development on Utah’s federal lands by designating them as federally protected lands. This is analogous to Trump’s rescinding Obama’s EPA regulations, like the Clean Power Plan, that stopped use of fossil fuels by calling life-giving carbon dioxide a pollutant.

The U.S. is the most blessed nation on the planet, with more than one-third of the world’s coal, oil, and natural gas and one million square miles of good farmland. We have the most resourceful workers that can develop these resources and make us the wealthiest and dominant nation on the planet if government policies don’t thwart these efforts.

Trump’s policies are “Making America Great Again,” which is shown by a record-setting stock market rise, lowest unemployment in 17 years, and 3 percent national economy growth.

JAMES H. RUST, OF THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE

Trickle-down economics won’t create jobs

The GOP tax bill is trickle-down economics on steroids. It is the same nonsense that Bush No. 1 and Bush No. 2 used to destroy the economy. Trickle-down does not work. It will not create jobs, it will kill them. There is only one thing that creates jobs, and that is orders for goods and services, and those orders come primarily from the middle class. The “just in time” principle that business runs on proves this. If you take money from the middle class to make the rich richer, that will kill those orders and kill jobs. If the rich having money created jobs, we would be swimming in jobs. We would have to import people from Mexico to take all the jobs. We know that giving the already-rich more money will not create jobs.

BRUCE HANSEN, STONE MOUNTAIN