Taxation reduces mansion building

To the editor:

In reference to Sam Blackwell's March 24 column: Prior to the current federal income tax of 1913, many people, not just millionaires, could afford to build and own antebellum mansions in the South and in the North. Now that the federal and state governments hog over 40 percent of most working families' incomes through the income tax, the Medicare tax, sales taxes, and Social Security taxes, plus the hidden taxation of Federal Reserve-controlled interest rates on money created out of thin air (by printing it and through unaudited, cooked-books, Enron-style accounting), new antebellum mansions are reserved only for folks like Bill Gates and the queen of England. Now that millionaires are a dime a dozen due to inflation -- please understand that inflation is fueled primarily by taxation -- most of today's millionaires simply cannot afford antebellum mansions.

ROBERT T. KRONE JR., Cape Girardeau