To the Editor:

Re “Soak! The! Rich!” (Sunday Business, Feb. 10):

With “ 40 percent of the world’s wealth ... controlled by 1 percent of the people,” as the economist Joseph E. Stiglitz points out, some Democrats want to “soak the rich.” They are not alone. President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, repeatedly advocated tax policies that would create more equality — for moral and nationalistic reasons, not merely to raise revenue.

In his yearly message in 1907, Roosevelt proposed a steeply graduated inheritance tax, explaining that “no advantage comes either to the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the money by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the enormous fortunes.”

Moreover, “such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood.”

President Trump and his fellow Republicans might be interested to know that T.R. added, “We ha ve not the slightest sympathy” with th e “socialistic idea.”