The following is a letter to the editor that I submitted to the Richmond Times Dispatch on January 15, 2003, and was published on January 27. Editor, Times Dispatch: Over half of the tax breaks in the President’s proposed economic package go to the rich. This is grossly unfair. The rich are owed far more than half of any tax cuts. According to the IRS, in the year 2000, the wealthiest one-percent of wage earners earned twenty-one percent of all income covered under the income tax but paid thirty-eight percent of all taxes. Our tax system is skewed so that some groups of individuals (the most productive) are less equal under the law, and, therefore, exist solely to serve others (by paying for social programs such as the President’s proposed “re-employment accounts”). This injustice has little or no chance of being resolved as long as current ideologies persist. The Liberals cry that tax cuts are a “cost” and that savings are a “leakage” from the system. However, reality demonstrates that savings and investment both strengthen the economy and generate demand. Therefore, tax cuts are both moral and practical. Many Conservatives justify tax cuts not on moral grounds but on the basis that the cuts will “stimulate the economy” (by giving people money to buy a new refrigerator). Thus, they implicitly support the Liberal premise that consumption and short-term thinking are what drive our economy. The best long-term solution (short of a flat tax) would be the elimination of the capital gains tax, which is nothing but an egregious penalty on successful investment. Otherwise, like in Venezuela, it may be time for Atlas to shrug. -Bob Murphy. Richmond