It’s Not Just About the Millionaires
Kudos to the NYT for printing this piece, as it flies in the face of most of what they print in their op-ed pages.
When you add up all the money made by all the people who earn more than $1 million a year, it amounts to around $700 billion. But since the millionaires already pay close to $200 billion in taxes, the government would have to increase rates to nearly 100 percent — which is about the worst idea ever — for it to have any real impact.
At least the author gets it half right: even taxing the top bracket at 100% won’t solve our budget and debt problems. But hiking taxes on the middle class isn’t going to help, either. To put a significant dent in just our budget gap—let alone federal debt—taxes would have to be raised enough that we’d face more foreclosures and the economy would falter as the middle class stopped spending on anything but necessities. The problem isn’t federal revenue—it’s federal spending.