I think the rich should ABSOLUTELY pay more because the majority of them are selfish and don't care about anybody but themselves! Trust me, if you are a millionaire, it is NOT going to hurt you if you just pay a little more in taxes. I believe that if you are a good and righteous person, you would want to help the poor or people that are less fortunate. It's as simple as that! People need to stop being so selfish.
The top 10% of wage earners in this country already pay over 70% of the collected income taxes in this country. If that's not enough, then how much more should they pay? 75%? 80%? 95%?
About 45% of our population pays no income tax at all. Maybe it's about time those on the bottom start paying their fare share for a change. And remember, the US is the most generous people in the entire world. We give more of our money to the so-called poor than anybody, and it's not those Wal-Mart people that are giving, it's those greedy millionaires you speak of.
Really? The bottom 50% of US make about 11% of ALL US income, how much should they pay? BTW the top 1/10th of 1% make about what the bottom HALF of US make, WHILE they pay record low tax rates (EFFECTIVE) of around 20% ON RECORD INCOMES!!!)
So what's wrong with the same percentage for everybody? After all, even if we all paid the same percentage, the wealthy would still be paying much more than the rest of us.
But if you think that the wealthy should pay more only because they have more, why not apply that to other things?
For instance, if you have a nice row of bushes on your front lawn, wouldn't it only be fair that government take some of your Bushes and give them to your neighbor down the street that has none? Or maybe you are an entertainment nut. You have four televisions in your home. Would it not be right that government take two of your televisions and give them to people that have none? How many cars do you own?
Does this sound ridiculous? Of course it is, yet, that's exactly how the left views wealth in this country. It would be insanity for government to be confiscating bushes, jewelry, cars or televisions, but not money. Why is that?
How much a citizen makes is irrelevant if we actually believe that all men are created equal or that there is equal protection under the law. It's really none of governments business.
Aristocracy vs Wealth Redistribution-- What Did the Founding Fathers Say?
Shall we call it socialism when govenment uses tax policy and regulation to share the nation's wealth to deliberately cause some level of equity? If so, America has lost touch with vital parts of the original foundation of American democracy. Men such as Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster, Theodore Roosevelt, William Gates Sr. and others would disagree heartily with modern conservative claims of "socialism." In fact, according to these men, equitable distribution of wealth in America is one of the founding principals of American democracy.
.....The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes. Noah Webster
The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. Adam Smith
Death, Taxes, and the American Founders
So, as with other political issues — even independence itself — Revolutionary-era Americans held a range of views on how much property people should be allowed to pass on to their children.
But one thing is certain: They hoped to prevent the emergence of a small group of people with perpetual wealth and thus perpetual privilege. Keeping a robust estate tax today would further that goal, and it would be consistent with a long-standing tradition of American democracy.
Death Taxes and the American Founders History News Service
Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and other fellow travelers
If there was one thing the Revolutionary generation agreed on — and those guys who dress up like them at Tea Party conventions most definitely do not —
it was the incompatibility of democracy and inherited wealth.
With Thomas Jefferson taking the lead in the Virginia legislature in 1777, every Revolutionary state government abolished the laws of primogeniture and entail that had served to perpetuate the concentration of inherited property. Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."
