> [...] we should avoid creating incentives for
> individuals to make more money than they can
> spend on a few lifetimes of personal consumption
> or for investors as a group to seek more money
> than is needed for investment.
This seems to fight the wrong problem. If taxes were progressive and fair, why would you want to discourage someone from doing something that leads to more taxes being paid?
Money-makers have shown themselves to be adept at not only money-making, but tax-avoidance. For some, tax-avoidance *is* "money-making" ... we should be removing the incentive to avoid taxation. We can do that by getting rid of the very concept of single-purpose tax breaks.
What we lack is someone to explain this in simple terms to large numbers of people, for it to gain popularity. Kind of a Steve Forbes, except with correct information :-)
I keep thinking that the issue is not "should the rich pay more taxes?" but rather: should an individual who has income of $x pay the same, more, or less than another person with the same income?
Ask a $250k/yr earner if they should pay more taxes, and you could get a variety of answers; ask one if they should pay more/less/the-same as everyone else who makes $250k/yr and you'll get a uniform answer: the same!
And yet: nothing could be further from the truth.
My belief is that if we could solve that problem, we'd be in a much better position to talk about how much total revenue (and thus spending) is required in our society.
/jordan