To the editor:

In his letter to the editor (Feb. 24), Robert Tyler attacks my “liberal” position that, if taxes need to be raised, it is more justifiable to raise our progressive income taxes (that take a higher proportion out of the income of the wealthy) than our sales taxes. And he charges that I “apparently never allow a dissenting view” in my KU economic classes.

Obviously, Mr. Tyler has never taken my course nor spoken to anyone who has, but I shall be happy to show him faculty evaluations from students who state that they are conservatives and who praise me for offering a variety of views.

My preference for raising progressive taxes is based on an economic law (the law of diminishing marginal utility) that states that the more you have of any given commodity, the less additional units will mean to you. As just one example, if you had no shoes, a pair of shoes would be invaluable to you, but if you had 20 pairs, one more pair would have little meaning. The same also applies to money. Taxing the poor means taxing away some of their necessities of life. Taxing upper-middle-class income-earners taxes, at most, their conveniences or luxuries. Taxing the wealthy affects only their savings or their purchase of bonds and stocks.

If being a liberal means that one considers it more important that the poor get the food they need to survive than that the multimillionaire can further increase his holdings, then I for one am not ashamed to plead guilty on this issue, and I’ll be happy to pay my fair share of increased taxes toward this end.

Harry G. Shaffer,

Lawrence