Regarding a letter by Gino Mariotti (“Republican Greed,” Oct. 29).

The writer believes a 70 percent tax rate would solve all our problems.

Put into perspective, the producers — small and big businesses, the ones who create jobs — are supposed to work and create wealth from Jan. 1 to Aug. 14 of each year and give all they’ve earned up to that point to the government. With that tax rate, they would keep only what they earn from Aug. 16 through Dec. 31.

Can you see how ridiculous this is? Who would want to work, produce, or invent? That’s why collectivist ideas and policies create apathy and mediocrity.

Reducing tax rates creates the opposite result, boosts production and invention, creates wealth and in turn, ironically, increases revenue for the government.

It’s simple. More businesses and more jobs equals more money paid in taxes, due to the enlargement of the whole economy. It’s not a fixed or limited system, it’s an open one. There’s always room for expansion of the middle class. Liberals do not get this simple concept. To them, the solution lies in the expansion of the influence of the State into every aspect of our individual lives. They truly believe a select group of “brilliant” people should take over the wealth and productivity of the whole of society and administer it.

The sad thing is that the average liberal doesn’t pay enough attention to be able to critically analyze and understand these topics. That’s why cunning politicians can appeal to the emotional, rather than the rational, side of the electorate. Add the fact less than 60 percent of the eligible population votes, and the picture gets very grim.

The insidious and malicious aspects of the liberal/progressive ideology, that the ones in power now know exactly what they are doing, why they are doing it, their basic credo is “the ends justify the means.”

To create their utopian reality of fairness, they have to destroy the middle class.

Think about it: for socialism to take hold, you need a dependent class. A strong and wealthy middle class does not need the government to survive. When you hear politicians on the left talk about supporting the middle class, understand that their vision of society collides with that assertion. In a collectivist system, there can only be two classes, the ruling elite and the masses.

The individual citizens who belong to the tea party, which is a movement more than a structured party, are precisely the ones who put reason before emotion, who understand the negative effects of big, out-of-control government, the ones who want the strongest and healthiest middle class, lower taxes and more freedom.