Two definitions exist for the term middle class. The first definition is of median-income households. The second one is of professionals - lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc, who make a living from their wits. Above them are the landed rich and below them are blue collar workers. In terms of income, however, they are anything but in the middle. A couple of engineers pulling in 75K apiece are in the top 10% of household incomes. And $200K households are in the top 5%. So when tax rates are hiked for $500K households, they are assuredly only hiking them for the top several % of high-income earners.
The issue isn't whose taxes get hiked - it's definitely not middle-income people - it's the effect of excessive taxation on capital formation, which affects growth rates and overall income levels. The higher the taxes, the lower the salaries. There is no free lunch.
I don’t differentiate the difference between a plumber making $125k a year and a Lawyer making $125k a year. The plumber’s probably ahead of the game because he didn’t spend 6 or 8 years for a post graduate doctorate. Just one has a higher potential than the other. Think buying $5 worth of powerball vs buying $90k worth of powerball lottery tickets. Mainly it’s because those professional fields have been diluted and devalued.
If you approximate an income pyramid, it’s obvious that the top 1% cannot sustain the bottom 20%., but the middle 50% can with +’s and -’s from the remaining 29%. So who does the burden fall the heaviest on? The 50% . That’s just off the cuff pie in the sky examples.