Most of the upper income liberals and moderate liberals I know don't think they are overtaxed. But then maybe the folks that I know I odd. A little chart is coming up soon. Stay tuned.
Tax increases and decreases tend to be at the margin.
The Reagan cuts were sizable, but they were still marginal cuts. The Clinton increase was slight compared to what the liberals really wanted to do, which was to roll back Reagan/Kemp/Roth altogether. They never did. The Reagan boom continued through the Clinton years, despite the marginal increase in taxes, because Reagan's basic taxing structure was not repealed (although I should point out that the only salutary thing that Bush I did was to get that silly "Boat Tax" repealed. The small aircraft and boating industry took a dive because of it.).
Perhaps the rich should pay more, but I seriously doubt that that would make a practical difference. The success of Reagan was that he brought a lot of money out from under the mattresses and into play. That led to an explosion in revenues. This model is the same one that Bush II is following. In the out years, this model will pay dividends, as people like to take their marginal increase in income and do one of three things: save it, spend it, or invest it.
Whichever way is chosen, the economy benefits.
What might be instructive is to watch Vladimir Putin's experiment in a 13% flat tax. Passed by the Duma last year, the flat tax has apparently led to the same process as happened under Reagan: rubles mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. Now the Russians are building shopping malls and tax receipts are up (by the way, their new Sukhoi fighters are on par with the JSF and the F-22).
Putin is trying to make the mafiya and the biznessmenyi put their cash to work in the legal economy instead of squirreling it away in hard currency accounts in Switzerland.
Be Seeing You,
Chris