Editor:

This is in response to Kaye Patchett's March 4 column in The Daily Wildcat where she exhibits her incredible math and economics skills. I was amazed to see how quickly she came to the conclusion that the present tax system redistributes the wealth in America. Ms. Patchett, you are truly a financial wizard! There are just a few minor considerations you left out.

First, do you really believe the rich pay the same percentage on their income as the middle class? If you do, take a moment out of your busy career as an economic forecaster to mark a big "F," for fool, in the middle of your forehead. The rich have enough money to hire good tax accountants with healthy salaries whose sole purpose is to make sure they find every tax loophole. Check out the deductions the IRS allows. There is a deduction for business expenses, investments, business losses, and property, just to name a few. Gosh, I don't think there's a deduction for creative-writing seniors who moonlight as economic wizards. You, Ms. Patchett, are nothing more than one of the many in the fat tax base. That base allows the rich to pay less on what they earn than the lower middle class. And the affluent people in America know this. So they gently work in political cartoons and opinion columns designed to berate the Forbes Tax Plan as Steve Forbes' attempt to get the rich out of paying their taxes. I have to chuckle when I think of you joining them in their fight against the flat tax like a pig nuzzling up to the farmer who is planning to slaughter it. You and the rest of the non-property, non-business owning people are the ones that pay for their loopholes.

Finally, I have to wonder how do you plan to retire if you are not investing right now? Do you think Social Security will be around when you retire? Well, it won't. And the middle class workaday shmuck is the one who'll get screwed. As the system stands, investments are taxed twice. Once as income and once as capital gains. Forbes wants to tax it once. Considering that every person in America who wants to retire will have to take care of his or her own retirement through investment, I think Forbes has the right idea. By the way, who will pay for your retirement? Random House? The irony to the whole "flat tax plan scare" is the people who could really benefit from it can be easily duped, or scared if you will, into not supporting it. And the rich, who know the power of voting, will continue to have a large tax base filled with pigs, rubbing up against their legs just before the slaughter day, April 15.

Jon Leonard
mechanical engineering senior