The highest income earners pay the bills in this country, they also buy the debt we print to perpetuate this contrived diabolical government death spiral. The uberwealthy and retired who live on dividends and interest have only recently been given the cap gains tax break.
Heres what IM saying: Keep those cap taxes out of the picture while taxing the hell out high-incomes and more people will retire and live off their investments. The old senior management is then out of the picture, sucking the junior management into higher positions for less pay - saving the company money they can then use to hire more labor = more people working, higher profits, less unemployment, more people paying into the tax system to support the entitlement programs.
I've heard two other schemes Im not willing to get behind: Tax wealth, not income. You start taxing Dick Fuld's 450 million dollar art collection, and he'll be more likely to spread the money to other more productive ends.
The other one would only make sense to an economist: Tax the lowest earners the highest amount, because you know, they need some motivation to work harder so they can pay less taxes.
In other tax related news, I learned today that the government wants to subsidize my R&D budget with a tax credit (because they want us to invent things in America)... so now the race is on to make things be R&D costs.