[mrnoodle]

I'll grant all your points about social mobility, and take my lumps on using unverified numbers. But we're still left with very basic questions that you still haven't answered. I'll reword them: Why should the federal government increase the percentage of income it takes from you to offset the costs incurred by its inability to wisely use the money it has already soaked you for? Why does "society," with all the grand implications of that term, owe anyone a living? What is the incentive for someone who manages a small business on family income to succeed in that business when they know at some point, they will be punished monetarily for it and that which they have honestly earned will be stolen and Robin-Hooded out to those who did not earn it? Furthermore, if they know this is to happen, what's the point of charitable giving on a personal level?

The people fanning the flames of class warfare are ultra-rich Boston trust fund Democrats, and the only reason they're doing it is for votes. Someone as smart as you should see that. Like I said, I know lots of poor people, and am almost poor myself. Any of us with any pride feels marginalized by the idea that some fat cat is telling his fellow fat cats that they owe us crumbs from their table. We'd far rather buy our own damn table with money we earned. That's not everyone, of course. The lazy ones are lazy at any income level. Don't fool yourself into thinking that everyone at a certain income level is some bluecollar hero who just can't get by because "the rich" took all the available money and left none for the lower classes.

As to your point about social mobility: it's damn hard to break out of a rut where you're not making any money and don't see any money coming in in the foreseeable future. Extremely hard. And nearly impossible if you have mouths to feed. But social mobility is not enabled by handouts. The gap between rich and poor doesn't close when you take away incentives for small business.

I know 2 people personally who owned small businesses in my town. One of them had such a tiny tiny profit margin that when the city came in and ordered him to dig a new septic tank, it took him 2 years to come up with the money. Luckily the second year was really good for him.....except it put his personal income into the next tax bracket, and he couldn't afford the CPA to tell him how to get around the loopholes. We're talking an ADDITIONAL $5,000 owed to the government, for making about $12,000 more.

In other words, all the extra work he did, all the extra hours and sweat, netted him abou $7k towards a (can't remember the number exactly...$11k?) construction project. Hmm. Who gets the pound of flesh? The city water board or the feds? He's automatically put in a position of having to cheat to get by. So, he sold the only saleable asset he had -- his truck -- and paid for the digging and got his taxes in on time. All this because he was considered "rich" by the standards of the left and therefore owed a greater percentage of his income.

Oh, but selling the truck meant that he couldn't run the delivery part of his business, which had been funding his shop for the past 3 years. Shop closed, land sold to a whitewater rafting outfit. The taxes he paid on the income from the sale must've been impressive, but I don't know what happened to him after that.

He didn't cheat or use loopholes, and was put out of business in part by unfair taxes. Well, he cheated a little. I worked for him part time for a few years and he paid me in fishing tackle and cash under the table. Paying unemployment insurance, payroll tax, workman's comp, and all the other garbage would've sunk him even sooner. This is the environment that liberals create in their lust to punish oil company executives and Republicans.