You can't raise taxes on the rich!

As we keep being told, if you tax the "producers", the "job creators", the "achievers", then they will stop doing what they do.  If taxes are too high, then it is not worth your time to try and be productive.  You are better off collecting welfare and living off the state.  This is especially true if welfare is robust and generous, like it is now.

So lets assume I make 1 million dollars.  Right now, if that is all on regular income and not capital gains, I will have to pay 36% to the government in income tax.  That is the lowest percentage that has been required form the top top bracket in over 50 years.  So I am pretty happy with that.  I get to keep $640,000.  But if you raise my taxes to 39% (like they were under Bill Clinton, when job creaton and economic growth were MUCH stronger), then I will only get to bring home $610,000.  What's the point?  I might as well not work if I only get to keep $610,000.  I'll quit and go on welfare. I mean, really.  With welfare, I get $1,000 a month for doing nothing.  Or I can work hard and only make an additional $49,000 per month.  Why bother.

So maybe the "producers" won't go on welfare, but they'll leave the country.  The free-market devotee's should know that this will produce a void that someone else will fill.  That's the magic of the free market, baby.  And the social Darwinists should know that nature abhors a  vacuum.  Someone else will step up and "produce".  If all the employers left America, guess what?  Other people would become employers.  They seem to argue that there exists a ruling class of elite "producers" who must be courted or else they will leave our poor country of losers to wither and die.   If we educate our masses, any of us could become the next Bill Gates.  If we educate our masses, we will have more Bill Gates's, more "producers", and more things to sell to the rest of the world.

Andrew Carnagie made his fortune when taxes were as high as 90%.   So don't tell me that people won't produce unless they get to keep it all.  I think that if the top tax rate was returned to what it was in the Clinton era, that the "producers" would keep working.  If they pack it up and leave, others will take their place.  They are crying that "the sky is falling" because of greed.  They get to keep more than ever before, and it's still not enough.

Now, I do not assert that raising taxes alone will fix our financial mess.  We need to reign in spending.  We need to cut waste, fraud, and abuse.  But the #1 culprit for waste is the Pentagon, which is the one place that the conservatives refuse to look at.  Don't be fooled.  Those who are arguing loudest are not concerned with fiscal responsibility, fairness, nor sustainability.  They are concerned with getting theirs.