Letter to the editor originally appeared in the Staten Island Advance here. 

The "Taxman," article, that starts with income and then blames taxes for our "affordability crisis," needs more information. It completely overlooks the wage stagnation over the last four decades.

In total, wages used to be 55 percent of GDP, in the 1960s. Now they are only 45 percent; that's 10 percent less of GDP.  Current GDP is about $20 trillion.  So wages are $2 trillion LESS today than they would be if they had not flat-lined beginning in the 1970s.

And that $2 trillion as wages for us regular folk would have been spent in large part among us - instead of going up and away never to 'trickle down' again.  The $2 trillion in wages would have generated at least $4 trillion in economic activity 'down here' among us regular folk.

I grew up in the 1960s, my father, a working man, afforded a house, a car, vacations. I went to Columbia University and graduated with zero debt. Same for most of my friends. We afforded what we needed.

Where did our $2 trillion go? Not to the taxes; it went to the so-called "job-creators" - the people who can pay for politicians and lobbyists.