Kerry Pickett has a short must-read column in the Washington Times.  There are so many lies about taxes that it is nice to see a concise statement of the facts.  It is a fact that top earners in the U.S. pay a larger share of the tax burden than in any industrialized nation.  It is a fact that cutting tax rates on the wealthy has often resulted in them paying more tax and a larger share of the tax burden.

From the article:

Consider what happened each time the U.S. reduced the tax rate  significantly:

1920s: The top tax rate fell from 73 percent to 25 percent,  yet the rich (in those days, those earning $50,000 and up) went from paying 44.2  percent of the tax burden in 1921 to paying more than 78 percent in 1928.

1960s: President John F. Kennedy slashed the top tax rate  from 91 percent to 70 percent. In the ensuing three years, those making more  than $50,000 annually saw their tax payments rise by 57 percent, and their share  of the tax burden climbed from 11.6 percent to 15.1 percent.

1980s: The Reagan years saw the top rate fall from 70  percent in 1980 to 28 percent in 1988. What happened to the rich? The top 1  percent went from shouldering 17.6 percent of the income tax burden in 1981 to  paying 27.5 percent of the total in 1988. The top 10 percent saw their share of  the burden climb from 48 percent in 1981 to over 57 percent in  1988.

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In the Marxist world, power comes from stirring up class envy.  No matter what share of the burden is carried by the most productive people, the Marxist cry will always be,  “The rich are not paying their fair share.  Stick with me and we will take more of their property”.

Obama made it clear that the important thing to him was to bring down the rich, when, in an interview, he was confronted with the fact that raising the capital gains tax may decrease the amount of revenue for the government.  He said he would raise the tax burden anyway, “for purposes of fairness”.

Obama is much more ideological than practical.  Even if he understood, as Kennedy and Reagan understood, that cutting taxes increases economic activity and increases government revenue, he would still propose punishing the evil rich.