"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."  This quote by George Bernard Shaw takes on new meaning when you look at the recent statistics about American taxpayers.  Forty-seven percent (47%) of households pay no Federal Income tax and forty percent (40%) of households actually get money back, offsetting whatever they pay in Social Security taxes.  (It is hard to understand how Pres. Obama will keep his promise to lower taxes for the bottom fifty percent (50%) other than simply sending everyone making less than $50,000 a year a check courtesy of the evil rich people.

Those evil rich people, the top ten percent (10%) of income earners, refuse to pay their fair share.   After all, they only pay seventy-three percent (73%) of all income taxes.  So much for the oft repeated lie that the middle class is bearing an unfair tax burden.

It may sound good at first to be able to have the upper 10% pay all of the taxes.  I mean, why steal when you can get the government to take it for you.  The problem arises in that those who are truly rich can vote with their feet.  New York found this out when it passed a "millionaires tax" to raise extra revenue.  For some reason the revenue did not pan out like New York had hoped.  Rather than pay the additional taxes, a large number of millionaires decided to move to sunny Florida and other states with lower taxes.  Not only did New York lose out on the taxes, it also lost jobs as these millionaires relocated their companies to more business friendly environments.

For decades the U.S. has benefited from wealthy Europeans relocating to the U.S. to avoid high rates of taxation in the countries of origin.  The problem is that while the U.S. is now advocating even greater taxes on the rich, many European countries and cutting taxes.  Are we setting up a scenario to reverse the flow of capital.   To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher - The problem with Socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money.

Can you imagine what it would happen if for one year the top ten percent (10%) decided to defer enough income to reduce their taxes by fifty percent.  It is not that hard for someone making $350,000 to defer $110,000 in income and drop out of the top tax bracket.  In fact one wealthy American during the great depression arranged his finances to pay no taxes for several years at the height of the Depression to protest Pres. Roosevelt's confiscatory taxes.  If it happened on a widespread scale, Pres. Obama could go down in history as the first President to have a $1 Trillion deficit and the first to have a $2 Trillion deficit.