Letters: Just think of what taxes could buy SC

Our state boasts of its low taxes. Why not also boast of our underfunded infrastructure? Let’s advertise: “Enjoy driving on South Carolina’s poorly maintained road system. Appreciate our understaffed prisons and mental health facilities, our polluted waterways, our ‘minimally adequate’ public education system. Etc.” Then let’s see how many new businesses want to build here. Or stay here.

Republican presidential candidate George Herbert Walker Bush pledged: “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Once he became president and actually saw the needs, understood the system and became presidential, he supported higher taxes.

The 13 colonies’ rebellion against taxation without representation wasn’t about taxation itself; it was about being taxed by a government where you have no representation. Well, we do supposedly have representation.

Legislators need to look around at our failing infrastructure, which is in large part a result of our misguided commitment to such low taxes. They need to commit to seeing our state’s needs and come to an agreement on how to raise the taxes.