To the editor:
Our disabled veterans are grossly undercompensated and have been for generations. This is most especially true for our totally and permanently disabled veterans. Our disabled veterans have been asking Congress for fair and adequate compensation since the end of World War I, in 1918. That was 104 years ago!
In 2022, a totally disabled veteran with no dependents is compensated at the ridiculous rate of $39,984.72 dollars annually. The National Average Wage Index for 2020 was $55,628.60 dollars per annum, and the median income for 2020 was $67,521.00. The per capita GDP in 2020 was $63,416.00 dollars, among the highest in the world. This discrepancy is insane.
There is a far better chance that Bigfoot will be elected governor than there is a chance that our disabled veterans will be fairly compensated anytime soon. They realize that they are being manipulated and given short shrift by the wealthy and politically connected top 5% of the wealth pyramid in order to keep their compensation low and ensure a low tax rate for the elites. The elites use the national debt as a constant scare tactic to garner support from the working class and poor.
We can levy at least a penny tax on every dollar traded on the stock market to pay off the national debt and/or finance proper compensation for our disabled veterans. The investor class must pay back what they have stolen out of the people’s coffers in the GOP-enforced 2017 tax relief scam.
The New York Stock Exchange alone traded about 1.46 billion shares a day in 2019. There are presently 13 separate stock exchanges operating in the USA.
This treatment of disabled veterans is now a grave national security situation.
Once American youth clearly grasp that if they enlist into the armed forces and subsequently receive serious illnesses or injuries which will require a disability retirement, they will receive these substandard levels of support, then at that point the armed forces will collapse. What clear-thinking young person would agree to a lifetime of near poverty as a “reward” for service-connected injuries? The entire scenario is insane. Would you allow a young person in your family to get involved in this craziness? Of course not.
Our congressional delegation should introduce legislation now to set compensation at least at the level of the NAWI for all types of totally and permanently disabled veterans. And they should also consider giving federal income tax exclusion to all types of totally and permanently disabled veterans for all income, regardless of source, up to $125,000 per annum.
-Tom Barnes, Alexandria
