The issue is who will pay more

Much of what you say in your editorial regarding the graduated tax proposal is true. Illinois needs revenue. It cannot cut its way out of the problem. Taxes are going to go up. The question is, on whom? Your position, if followed, ensures that they will go up on everybody instead of just the wealthy. Very few families make over $500,000 a year, and if they do, they can afford to help the community that enables them to live so well. Because we can't solve all our problems at once is a poor reason for not beginning to solve one of them with a principle you support.

People are going to leave Illinois and people are going to move in as long as Chicago is the economic force that it is. Generating fantasies about how the government is out to get some group or another is the principal way that opponents have of scaring people who come nowhere near the income limits in the referendum.

I believe it's true to say to ordinary people "if you want your taxes to go up, vote no." Those members of your editorial board who demand that everything be solved instead of working on solving one thing are dooming ordinary Illinoisans to a tax increase. We can't cut our way out of this problem.

Larry Williams

Libertyville