Progressive tax not the answer

Professor Philip Meyer’s commentary is a confused mishmash of liberal/socialist bromides lacking factual support.

He states that “a shift began when the Reagan administration started a systematic transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the privileged few at the top.” This is absurd. Poor

Single mother: Jessica Stevens, 22, receives public assistance from North Carolina. people are poor because they don’t have much wealth. How can it be systematically transferred to the people at the top? And what are the facts that support this statement?

Further, he confuses “wealth” and “income” throughout the piece. To use a simple example, a bank savings account is wealth; the interest it earns is income. How will an even more progressive income tax help to “redistribute” that wealth?

Meyer says that “the public’s ideal distribution would let the top 20% own about 30% of the privately held wealth.” Which “public” is he talking about? And how are we as a nation to “let” people only have a certain portion of the wealth?

The piece also fails to mention the fact that the small percentage of top earners already pays a huge percentage of federal income taxes. At the same time, nearly half of tax filers pay no federal income tax at all.

Al Bowers Prescott, Ariz.