Quote:

Economy - Americans work harder than just about anyone, and seem to be getting less for it. The mega-rich are controlling a huge portion of money, and not helping out nearly enough. Our biggest problem, really, is the perception that any reasonable solution is "socialism". We must fix the inequity and have the have it alls start paying on a progressive tax schedule.



Income taxes are already paid on a progressive schedule. Rich people are already paying the vast majority of taxes:

Quote:

By 2005, the most recent year data are available, our top 1 percent of filers were paying nearly 40 percent of the federal income tax bill, while those in the 2nd to 5th percentile paid another 20 percent. Every other group saw its share of the tax bill decline, sometimes substantially



Source: Click

That article covers a lotta hyperboleed political claims made by some Democrats...

Someone mentioned what Warren Buffet's been running around saying about it being unfair that labor is taxed at a higher rate than capital gains. I agree with that. However, there's supposedly significant real world data that if you lower capital gains taxes, you increase the revenues brought in by them. Yeah, that's a typical fiscal conservative argument that's controversial. There's just actual real world data to prove this in the one area of capital gains. Supposedly, every president since Carter has lowered capital gains taxes and every time the revenues brought in by them have increased. No doubt there's a minimal number where that stops being true, but we haven't hit it yet.

So yeah, it sounds unfair to tax labor more than you tax capital gains. But, when in practise it works out better, who cares about how it sounds?

I'm summarizing a lot of that from memory. Maybe I'll find a link for that stuff later if people are interested.

The article linked above briefly mentions Buffet and the taxes he pays. But, it does it passingly and insufficiently.