I'm not sure how you interpreted my comment, but I'm partially agreeing with you. "Tax the rich" never works out that way, since it's mostly people at the very

I'm not sure how you interpreted my comment, but I'm partially agreeing with you. "Tax the rich" never works out that way, since it's mostly people at the very bottom of the upper class paying most of the taxes. The wealthy folks everyone gets in an uproar over don't pay any taxes, have the political power to avoid it, and even if they didn't, would be able to hire lawyers and accountants to help them avoid it. As a result, it's the people trying to claw themselves into the wealthy class that are most penalized by income taxes. Let's go to a consumption tax with some kind of cash prebate to make sure the first $10k-$20k of spending is untaxed, and dispense with income taxes that have largely failed to do what they were designed to do.