There seems to be a basic disconnect here.

The first question should be, what is the ethical basis for saying that one person should pay 10X more for the same services as another person?

I don't recall the government assigning me my job. I don't appreciate some third party trying to tell me how much money is "enough".

Most people I know who are rich work their butts off.  They are people who are really REALLY good at what it is they do. And in their wake they create millions of jobs.  Any sane government is going to want to ensure that these people have a big incentive to keep doing the stuff they do.

I'm in that top 5% presently but since I'm "only" 33 I haven't acquired that much in assets (i.e. income + time is needed).  My incentive to keep doing what I do is partially based on being able to provide a better life for my family.  This year we rented a cottage up north. It was a dank little cottage. But maybe in a couple years I'll be able to afford to buy a cottage at the lake. That provides me an incentive to keep working hard towards that goal. And in my case, when I work hard, jobs are created.

There is also the risk element. There is a significant stress to having your financial destiny totally in your hands. There has to be a significant reward in exchange for that risk and stress. If you take it away, then people like me who create jobs have less icentive to keep doing that and go find a "regular" job.

So if you end up with some high elite council of elders who says how much we all should have, then you will have, in effect, made everyone a lot poorer because the acquisition of wealth is a significant motivator for many people (in my case, wealth is a means to an end - long term financial security with the ability to provide a better life for my family). And if you take away that motivation, you end up with a lot fewer jobs.

David, I agree with your stats and I read it like this:

The rich only make 32% of the wealth but pay 53% of the taxes.  In a more fair system, they'd be paying 32% of the taxes.

Muggaz, those times when I don't think you're a particularly sharp stick come up when you say things like the above.

Where exactly do you think John Kerry has been for the past 19 years? In the US Senate.  Where are these tax laws made? In the Senate. 19 years isn't enough? I mean, heck, Kerry, being a billionaire and all, would be an excellent person to have proposed a law to stop these "loopholes" since his wife's family has made extensive use of things such as trust funds and other tax sheltering devices. 

The thing about "loopholes" is that they're expensive to maintain at the levels that will save a lot of money.  It's a matter of keeping the tax rate lower than the cost of making use of them.  Raise my taxes to 50%, for instance, and I suspect there are ways where I could get an effective tax rate of 45% by using some sort of accounting scheme. 

But where it is, currently, at 33% or whatever, there are no "loopholes" that do better than simply paying the taxes. That was Bush's point.

The tax rate during the Carter years was something like 70%. And when Reagan brought it down to the low 30s, government income actually INCREASED.  Why? Because rather than people messing around with complicated tax shelters with all the inherent waste, they just paid the taxes.

I do everything I can to keep my taxes less. But I still pay tons in taxes.  But raise them high enough and suddenly there'd be a "company cottage" and a "company X" and "Company Y" and so forth as you get into creative accounting to write things off that you wouldn't normally write off.  Right now, it's not worth doing that because I'd rather re-invest that money into the company since the taxes are low.  But raise taxes high and then it becomes a "if I don't spend it, the government will just take it so I'll find things to spend it on."