Republicans , the super-wealthy, and those aspiring to be super-wealthy are screaming bloody murder at the idea of substantially increasing the income tax rate on those bringing in vast sums of money every year. They saw that it unprecedented, They say that it is exploitive. They say that they have earned every penny of that money solely on their own efforts and are due every cent of it. They are lying.

I am old enough to remember when the highest income tax rate was 90.0 percent -- far less than the rates that are being called for today. Still, with all the possible deductions, no one actually paid that rate But, few who were born after the mid-1960s will remember that.

What are exploitive are the following: (1) attempts to hold down wages and benefits to the absolute minimum that they can squeeze out (creating and using working conditions that are unsafe and which wear people down and throw tem away, (2) exhaustive and predatory efforts to avoid paying a fair share of taxes, (3) an organized system of lobbyists paid to extract every ounce of advantage they can, with no regard to the well-being of others, (4) Using the advantage of the wealth they have to elect politicians who will do their bidding and increase their advantage, (5) abandoning workers at one location, pulling up stakes and then holding a bidding war between towns to extract as much advantage in tax concessions as they can so that they can avoid their civic responsibility.

Finally, they did not do it all by themselves. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Without the ideas, inventions, and writings if those who came before, it would be impossible to create the things and ideas we have today. Further, every business uses a huge variety of taxpayer supported public services -- which far too many businesses do not want to pay for. And, without the human capital of their work force, they could not have had the success that they have had.

Don't fall for the lies. Make they pay for the privilege they have and shoulder their fair share of civic responsibility.