No wonder Joe the Plumber Is worried About Taxes

The wealthy will always pay more taxes. Republicans try to sell that as redistribution of wealth and a hinderance to living the American Dream as if it stops people from starting their own business. Nonsense!

As I have said at every opportunity: Give free money to the rich, it's good business, investing in our future; give free money to the poor, it's welfare.

The idea of a progressive tax has garnered support from economists and political scientists of many different ideologies - ranging from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, although there are differences of opinion about the optimal level of progressivity. Some economists[15] trace the origin of modern progressive taxation to Adam Smith, who wrote in The Wealth of Nations:

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.[16]

In most western European countries and the United States, advocates of progressive taxation tend to be found among the majority of economists and social scientists who realize that completely proportional taxation is not even a possibility.[17][18] In the U.S., the vast majority of economists (81%) support progressive taxation.[17][

It would be shortsighted for the Queen Bee to cut the linecook loose over a 5% /$5000 or even 10%/$10,000 tax increase. She would spend more than that re-training another linecook, possibly losing customers loyal to that linecook, chancing competing with the new Hive opened by the linecook she mentored AND she would still need to pay someone to cook. She isn't at that point in the business going to takeover the cookline herself. Better to pay the taxes and continue to make sure the original linecook is happy.

Sure, there is a tipping point where increased taxes would outweigh advantages of keeping the linecook. But it would have to be pretty significant. Does she need to keep in her pocket (after tax deductions) $90,000 rather than $85,000? Is that going to really disrupt her business? Her ability to live well?

And those super-rich one percenters? Their share of the nation's income has risen, but their tax burden has risen even faster:

In 1979, affluent individuals made 9.3 percent of the nation's income and they paid 18.3 percent of the country's income tax.

In 2004, they made 16.3 percent of the nation's income but their share of the income tax burden leaped to 36.7 percent.
(ari fleischer)

It is true that Queen Bees everywhere have tolerated higher taxes as a consequence of their success and most don't complain about that. But it has to be profitable for the Queen Bee to hire that line cook or any other employee. Raise the cost of doing business, including taxes, a great deal less profitable, and Queen Bee may decide it just isn't worth it to stay open the extra hours or do the additional investment or take on more risk; she scales back or doesn't expand and the line cook's job is eliminated or is never created.

How about the smear campaign the media has launched against Cindy McCain? The NYT actually instigated an email campaign trying to get her daughter's friends to dig up or reveal any dirt they could find about Cindy. This is journalistic integrity? What or who is being served by this kind of thing?

The way it works today is that CEOs gets paid way over their worth even when they run the company into the ground (bankruptcy), and they walk away with golden parachutes.