I think a little education in the economics of taxations could be very effective and should at least be tried before a depression or hyper-inflation or revolution takes place. Some of the stuff flying around the internet is instructive...have you got the story of the 10 men who met regularly for dinner and paid the tab according to the progressive tax system?
Similar metaphors could be written and distributed based on the "Laffer Curve" - that theory is that if the low earners pay a small enough pecentage of their earnings in taxes, and the high earners pay a large enough percentage, at a certain income level the high earner nets the same as the low earner - hence no incentive to become a high earner - hence no high earners - hence no high tax-payers - hense severely curtailed revenues - hence government bankruptcy or hyper-inflation, you guess which.
A very important point to make to the "tax the hell out of the rich crowd" is that the catastrophic failure of this scheme will not take place in "a few thousand years" like "Global Warming" it could take place within one single Congress...2 years.
That's the problem about taxation. It needs gutted and restarted but reality tells me that isn't going to happen. I pay nearly the top tax rate on the marginal dollar but I stopped fretting about the unfairness of it.
What I fret about is the use and waste of the money once it leaves my hands. I get to cast votes once a year only to have the special interest groups, lobbyists, bleeding hearts, et al, et al, et al, unduly influence how that money is used. I'm resigned to government calling tax "revenue" and seeing a degraded economy as producing a "loss of revenue". Until it all comes tumbling down, and I've yet to see a modern nation with greater tax rates than ours suffer anything close to that yet, it will continue to be as it is with only minor shifts to the left or right.
As to your "Laffer Curve", unless you are in the 100+% tax bracket, earning a dollar means more money in your pocket. Earning two dollars doubles your take. Money people never turn away money because it is taxed. They never have and they never will.
The key word here is "theory". We are no where near a tax rate that would make someone earning minimum wage equal to someone earning $75,000 a year. In fact it seems that the more taxes are reduced, the more the wealthy scream (I am NOT suggesting that someone earning $75,000 is wealthy). Check out the tax rates of the 50s and compare them to current tax rates.
It concerns me that if we continue on our current path we could well end up in the same economic condition of some third world countries with a large percentage of our GNP going to service our debt.