Nothing Democrats have done to fix the economy worked as well as they promised it would - or at all - so there's no reason to believe their "soaking the rich" idea will fare any better. I'm no economist, but it seems likely that increased taxes on the wealthy - particularly those who employ us and provide to us the products and services we buy - will have a trickle down effect that will be more damaging to middle and lower income Americans than the tax increase will be helpful to the economy.

Because everyone, including the government, is better off. Did you not bother to actually comprehend the article?

to get out of debt.

I think it gets back to that whole "government is a necessary evil" thing.

That is all well and good, but we have a huge deficit at the moment.

Would it be so onerous to go back to Clinton era tax rates, which featured a balanced budget?

Avraam Jack Dectis

"when taxes are 100 percent, revenue to the government is also zero, because by taxing all the income of a particular group of people, you kill all economic activity in that group, so you’re left with nothing to tax."

One important caveat to this - *if* they are free to either move out or find another way to produce their income. If they *aren't* free, then they'll darn well make however much the state tells them they'll make. The Laffer Curve (and other such notions) only works fully when there is freedom in the equation. Which is why communist countries turn into such hell-holes in a short time - they begin rapidly stripping away freedom to force the producers to produce.

There's a microcosmic example of the problem with higher tax rates for higher earnings.

Once, long ago in the 1970s, I worked by the hour in a shop in Michigan. Straight time for hours 0-40. Time-and-a-half for the next 10 hours. Double time for the next 10 hours after that. The problem was in how these rates were taxed. We noticed that after putting in a certain number of overtime hours, it became pointless to do more because you'd lose the money to withheld income taxes; you'd be essentially working for free or next to it. At my hourly wage, the cut-off was about 54 hours in a week.

In other words, there was an unintentional cap placed on our productivity by the government.

Regarding income inequality: wages for adults, in constant 2008 dollars, have consistently declined or remained the same, depending on education level, for the past thirty years. This is well-established, despite the fact that among married couples with children, each household worked an average of four hundred additional hours annually in 2000 than they did in 1979.

To be fair, non-cash benefits such as health insurance, retirement pensions, and government benefits are also important resources for many lower- and middle-income Americans.

When income is adjusted to reflect these benefits it is correct that all income levels have seen increases over the same period. The lowest fifth in the income distribution saw an income increase of eleven percent, the second-lowest fifth saw an eighteen percent rise in income, the middle saw a twenty-one percent rise, and the fourth fifth saw an income increase of thirty-two percent. The top one percent of earners saw an income increase nearing 260 percent.

As illustrated in the above article, the tax rates on the very wealthy have fallen dramatically, the wealthy are paying a much lower proportion of their income in taxes than they did thirty years ago. One result is that the wealthy have been able to acquire a larger share of national income. When income from investments and dividends is included, that is, income from capital gains, the share of national income earned by the top one percent of wealthy Americans has increased from nine percent in 1974 to more than twenty-three percent in 2007.

In short, the wealthy are paying a larger share of the nation's income tax because they are earning so much more than most Americans. As a percentage of actual income, middle class Americans contribute more of their own money than wealthy Americans.

That's fine, its great that a few Americans are making vast sums of money. But I don't see at all how increased wealth among the wealthy has led to higher income for the rest of Americans. Income has declined, the only increases are the result of government benefits and the higher costs of health benefits paid by employers.

Putting more power and control in the hands of government is indeed the goal of all Statists, regardless of the ideological flag they fly.

When it comes to exerting power and control, the rich are the least of the Statists' problems. The rich are easily controlled because their wealth inside the borders of the nation tether them to a degree. Their generally friendly associations with those in political power makes the task of co-opting them into acquiescence or outright collaboration fairly straightforward.

The great mass of the poor are a danger if they resort to violence en masse, but can assuaged with the classic approach of providing bread and circus. When the franchise is allowed, the poor, properly manipulated, can be relied upon as a secure voting bloc, often resistant to reason, susceptible to populist rhetoric.

The existential threat to Statists are the middle class, the bourgeoisie, the small business folk. These people are frequently more self-reliant, less politically connected, and resistant to the Faustian bargain of corporatism.

It should come as no surprise that the hereditary nobility of Europe were hostile and dismissive toward independent small business folk, often considered outlaws in the middle ages. That attitude persists among the "old money" upper classes to this day. The most sincere expression of the mindset of Statists toward the middle class was offered by V.I. Lenin: "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."