I read with interest your article of April 4 "County termed ‘least affordable’ in country." It listed many low-wage jobs whose workers would not be able to afford housing in Monmouth County.

I’d like to add the observation that these workers would not benefit at all from the Bush tax cuts currently under consideration in the U.S. Senate. This, in spite of the fact that low-wage workers pay the same percentage of their incomes in taxes (payroll, sales and income), as do the very wealthy who receive the lion’s share of the tax cuts. In addition, these people rarely have health care coverage.

These are the people who take care of us and our families when we are sick and old, who serve us in stores and banks, who clean the offices where we work, who care for our children. This is important work, and these people work hard. Many of our troops in Iraq come from the families of these workers. We owe them a decent living standard.

In addition, these tax cuts are believed by Nobel Prize-winning economists and many others to be destructive to our fragile economy. "Reckless" is a favorite adjective. Remember, we tried trickle-down economics in the 1980s—it did not work. The economy turned around only after the tax increase of the early 1990s. Let’s not repeat a failed experiment.

Please write or call your Senators, Representatives, and the White House and urge them to abandon these tax cuts.

Kay Mueller

Rumson