Commenting on last weekend’s column by Peggy Noonan:

Peggy Noonan is powerful when writing about the president and Democratic leadership singing in unison: “Raise taxes on millionaires” and “I kept myself lonely for you.” (“This is No Time for Games,” Declarations, July 16).

Would anyone be better off if Henry Ford, Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell had been taxed at rate of 35% or more and prevented from building empires that provide us the indispensable products we rely upon? No one’s poorer because those inventors got rich.

If millionaires are prevented from becoming richer, why should they keep supplying us with the many ingenious devices that made them rich? Things once available only to a few are now available to everyone because someone invested in new, better and cheaper products, for instance, nylons for the masses instead of silk stockings for the rich. Inequality of income is the energizer for the many things we depend on every day. Where there’s less inequality of income the majority have a lower living standard.

Please explain why money taxed and spent by politicians magically provides more economic growth than money spent or invested by the people who earn it.

Ms. Noonan is right. Many people feel lonely, that something has gone fundamentally wrong, that our politicians are out of touch and that our children and grandchildren will be economically worse off than us. Friedrich Hayek warned in “The Road to Serfdom” that the paternalistic welfare state will alter the character of the people.

Thank God for gridlock.

Fred Schnaubelt

San Diego