Marin IJ Readers’ Forum for Jan. 11, 2026

No, this country does not need more billionaires

I think Gonzalo Schwarz’s Another View commentary published Dec. 28 with the headline “America needs even more billionaires fueled by the American Dream, not fewer” paints a rosier picture of America and its billionaires than is warranted.

Reports from ProPublica, CNBC, YahooFinance and others show that the ultra-wealthy often employ complex dodges and loopholes to evade taxes that the IRS said cost more than $150 billion a year. The tax cuts in Trump’s new One Big Beautiful Bill will mostly help the rich, and be partly funded by stripping health coverage and food stamps from millions of low-income Americans.

It’d be one thing if the anti-tax policies that began under former President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and have continued ever since, created benefits that “trickled down” to most Americans, but they haven’t. America’s nonpartisan Rand Corporation reported that from 1975-2023, $79 trillion has “trickled up” from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. The consequences are stark.

Scientific American reported that the U.S. is now the most unequal of all Western nations. And the commonly held belief that Schwarz repeats, that the “nonsocialist” U.S. is “the land of opportunity,” hasn’t been true for more than 20 years. If you start out poor in America, you’re more likely to stay that way than if you’d been born in “socialized” Canada or Europe.

We have the highest poverty rate, the highest maternal mortality rate and the highest infant mortality rate in the so-called First World. There are 42 million Americans burdened by $1.8 trillion in student debt, and health care bills are the No. 1 cause of personal bankruptcy. These things are seen nowhere else in the First World.

The policies Schwarz celebrates have made many billionaires, but at the expense of most Americans. Surely we can do better.

— Dr. Gary L. Aguilar, Greenbrae

Developers are wiping out history for housing in Berkeley

I am writing in regard to Rigel Robinson’s Bay Area Voice commentary published Jan. 2 with the headline “Berkeley is making progress in push to add needed housing.”

I think Robinson’s essay ignores the incredible damage that is being done to the Berkeley urban environment. The city is unique in that it has preserved historic commercial and residential neighborhoods built before World War II. It is rare for a city to have such wonderful character, charm and beauty.

I worry developers in Berkeley are bulldozing irreplaceable architecture and replacing it with generic “Anywheresville” concrete blocks. Neighbors have very little say when a group of houses on their street are torn down to be replaced with five-story (or taller) market-rate “Stalinist” block-style housing. Developers are doing this without any seeming regard to the loss of historic buildings or traffic congestion.

In the meantime, I see empty lots staying empty. This is not the manner in which new housing should be developed.

— Jonathan Pritikin, Mill Valley

San Rafael mayor should not critique others about outreach

I am writing in response to the article published Jan. 3 with the headline “San Rafael concerns persist over Marin Transit bus yard plan.” The article includes comments from San Rafael Mayor Kate Colin, in which she appears to criticize Marin Transit’s community outreach efforts over a proposed electric bus yard. Considering Colin’s own apparent lack of community outreach and transparency over the city’s planned homeless “tiny cabins” interim shelter project at 350 Merrydale Road, I think her comments reek of hypocrisy.

I found the public records on the shelter project revealing. City officials began to eye the property for a homeless housing shelter site as early as 2023. The in-house plans appeared to ramp up in the spring of 2025. However, it was only two days before Colin and other officials publicly announced at the press event on Oct. 15 that there would be an interim shelter project there that most residents and business owners in the area were given any real idea that the project was even under consideration.

I felt blindsided. I think Colin’s own statements made it clear that, by the date of the announcement, the project would be moving forward. So, for her to criticize anyone for lack of community outreach is rich. Colin and the City Council members need only look in the mirror to see what a community outreach total failure looks like.

Reading Colin’s criticism of Marin Transit only makes the wound inflicted by the 350 Merrydale surprise feel all that much deeper.

— Gregory Andrew, San Rafael