The whole statist crowd, starting with Obama, is clamoring for more taxes on the rich. Today’s WSJ includes a letter in which the writer makes the excellent point that by their own choices to spend and invest, those people do a lot of good. Other people (rich and not-rich) compete to get them to part with some of their money. In contrast, when the state taxes their incomes, the money gets distributed through the coercive and corrupt process we call politics.

Competition through the free market is vastly more productive than competition through politics. Here’s the letter:

How the Rich Spread Wealth Around

I beg to differ with reader Andrea Rouda and others who believe that rich people “are the problem, not the banks or the politicians in Congress” (“Fortune Has Solved Their Spending Issue,” Letters, Nov. 3).

Has Ms. Rouda ever considered how many of us “non rich” people make our livings from building and selling things to “the rich”? A $50 million, 90,000-square-foot house equates to $556 per square foot. How much of that cost represents labor? Easily half, or tens of millions of dollars. Hundreds of working families earned an honest living from work there.

Which is better, to have the government take more money from “the rich” and dole it out in questionable ways, or to let the rich spend their money and thereby create hundreds of thousands of jobs for those who provide goods and services to the economy?

Sullivan Richardson

Chief Financial Officer

Adaven Homes

Las Vegas