[reaganaut1]

So many really rich people in Hollywood, Wall Street, and elsewhere support the Democrats that confiscatory tax rates on them would have a certain justice. But if conservatives accept the principle that a really rich person, say someone earning more than $1 million a year, can be taxed at a 79% rate, as under Roosevelt, it's just a matter of time before such rates are extended to lower incomes.

The Times and other leftists are admitting that all the spending they support will eventually require much higher taxes than even Obama is currently proposing.

[Tarpon]

You cannot tax and spend your way to prosperity. If that were true the Soviet Union would rule the world.

Not that our liberal naive friends would mind that.

[C210N]

1. I don't like what my government is spending money on: welfare state, acorn, abortion, un (sic), indoctrination of kids, social insecurity, etc. Therefore, I don't want to pay more in taxes, and I don't even want folks wealthier than me, paying more... even the hollyweird types, as all it does is bloat the federal govt.

2. Big difference between the "lower" tax rate of today and the "higher" one of yesterday as pointed out by the NYT is that today you need to aggregate the net taxes and fees that help to bloat the government. If you add in to the mix of income tax (local, state, federal), excise taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, user fees, etc, etc, etc, you see that we pay probably much more to the govt as a whole than ever before.

[Reeses]

David Leonhardt is an economics columnist for The Times and a staff writer for the magazine.

In the real days of journalism, a staff writer would interview an expert. Today we get analysis from a staff writer that insists on getting a vanity byline.

[Jim Noble]

All this about tax RATES and "the rich" is nonsense.

The real rich do not rely on income, they rely on assets.

High rates of tax on INCOME punish strivers, not the rich.

Or, to put it another way, it's not your income that makes you rich.

[Jim Noble]

confiscatory tax rates on them would have a certain justice.

Only if you tax their assets.

As long as the rate on mansions and land is zero, they'll be fine with whatever Obama wants to do to their up-and-coming competition.