CompuServe Messages

> And the obvious solution is to take it [they money rich people have] > all away thru force…? I said nothing of the kind. You attempt to belittle my argument by extending it to absurd, never stated lengths. The rich by virtue of their riches certainly have (or should have) a greater sense of obligation to society. To the extent they voluntarily contribute to charity, great. But, hey, voluntary contributions are often deductible so when a rich guy give $100K to a charity, then writes it off on his taxes, he's giving considerably less, and he may on occasion even give it for his own financial benefit, as any accountant would tell you. I've already talked here before about the virtues of a progressive tax structure, and won't belabor that again. Suffice to say I believe there's ample evidence that an upwardly sliding scale (not one that comes anywhere near to taking "all" the richest guy's money, obviously) is beneficial to society in ways well beyond the impact to the wealthy. In any event, the middle class, as our largest class, will still carry the heaviest tax burden, unless of course the middle class continues to slip toward poverty, as has been the trend the past 15-20 years. In which case, we'll have a two-tiered society of rich and poor, and you can bet the poor won't be paying taxes sufficient to fund defense or anything else. To the extent that dynamic models reflect real world conditions, fine. However, as I see it, the GOP gambit now and in the Reagan eras (the very gambit that Stockman, Stein, Weidenbaum, et. al., eventually admitted was a shell game) was to misuse dynamic models to forecast unjustifiably high revenues. Been there, done that, got three trillion in additional debt to show for it.