It's not really about how much, but rather to show we're serious about attacking the deficit. If we look serious, people feel better. When people feel better, they spend more. When people spend more, more jobs are created to meet demand. When more people have jobs, there's even more money to spend and more taxes to collect to close the deficit. Why do you guys have to be taught the same basic economic lessons over and over again? C'mon, it's ECON 101!
Econ 101? Being an Economics major, I must have missed the class that showed the model and empirical data detailing a correlation between people willing to spend more since the "rich" (high annual income earners, not necessarily, the wealthy) are now paying their "fair share". Economically speaking, you believe that this is a top priority to show we're serious about attacking the deficit vs. putting a dent in annual Federal outlays or increasing people's personal income (Federal spending is outpacing people's income)? If we tax 100% of the income of everyone making more than $1million, you only cover 2 months of Federal outlays. That means that we now need to cover 80 percent of the Federal outlays, just over $1 Trillion.
Basic Economic Lesson: Reducing spending and increasing personal income growth are higher priorities. Taxing the high income earners is merely a symbolic gesture rooted in class warfare that will only make some people feel good about themselves.....we will still be dealing with $ trillion dollar deficits.