Taxing high income is fair

We were deeply disturbed by your editorial opposing renewal of the "millionaire's tax" ["Don't renew 'millionaire tax,'" March 14]. We expected better from a paper whose readership (and stewardship responsibility) is Long Island's middle class.

It is well documented that public policy has shifted radically toward the interests of the upper 1 percent of income earners. Our problem is an economic system that spectacularly privileges the upper 1 percent and then allows people at that level to act in a highly unpatriotic fashion by not shouldering their fair share of the burden of rebuilding an economic system that their own behavior crashed.

The current cuts planned by the State Legislature will mostly not deal with the inefficiencies in the public sphere. Instead, these cuts will savage public education and other services vital to getting Long Island's economy back on its feet for the "bottom 99 percent" of us, your readership.

Paul M. Bingham

and Joanne Souza

Stony Brook