wae said:
I remember there was an episode of the Cosby Show where Dr. Huxtable told his kid that the definition of "rich" was when your money worked for you versus you working for your money.
I agree with that 100%. When people ask me "why do you think we need to tax the rich" I make the distinction between working rich and non-working rich. Yes, I do think non-working rich should bare the largest burden of our taxes.
Having some intimate knowledge of how the later considers their finances, they give a tremendous amount of money to charity to avoid additional taxation, but as a whole, a few percentage points of taxation doesn't threaten them. They have such tremendous wealth that even at absurd levels of taxation they'll still make money doing virtually nothing. At those levels the theme of "money is no object" really rings true, especially when they themselves didn't necessarily make that wealth (generational/old money).
For the rest of us mere mortals, I know some folks who make above $200k/year but they work damn hard for it. Granted, it's not physical labor, but its a lot of time in airplanes, flying around the world, doing highly technical or tedious work when they are in the office, and sitting in meetings all day everyday. I give a lot of credit to someone who despite making more in a single year than I'll make in five, still goes to the office everyday at 8AM. Should that person still pay taxes? Yes.
I also know some business owners. This is where my views on taxation get a little bit hard to quantify. I give lots of credit to job creators, but I don't think every person who invests in a company is a job creator, and therefore, I have some concerns about saying that because someone is rich and doesn't do work, that they should get a tax break because their investments create jobs. Not necessarily. Real estate is a great place to make money out of proverbial thin air. There are plenty of other examples. Where I want incentives is for businesses and business owners to create good paying sustainable jobs. No, not just $15/hr minimum wage, but the local AMI rate. And it'd be rad if somehow we could tie the taxes of the ownership to the difference in incomes across the company and investors. If a business owners makes $100k but his employees make $80k, then I'd be inclined to give that business owner some serious tax breaks.
The thing that worries me the most is how the lower and middle classes just haven't seen big changes in their lifestyles in the last 30 years. Granted we all carry around mini-super computers that can get the world's information nearly anywhere, and we drive far nicer vehicles that 30 years ago, but our lifestyle hasn't change - ie, we still work 8AM-5PM, M-F, because we desperately need to maintain healthcare coverage, and we get roughly the same amount of vacation time we did 30 years ago, same amount of Holidays, and now, we pay significantly more of our household income towards housing.
And we're all mostly locked into that. Sure, some people could live off grid and only "work" a few hours a week to pay their bills, but for most people, even in places with very low cost of living, you still need some sort of steady income and more importantly, still need healthcare.
The "Middle Class" shouldn't just be about "stuff" it should be about lifestyle. If our lifestyles have drastically changed in 50 years since the middle class was coined, we need to revaluate that definition. If now it require two incomes to afford a house, and then we pay for childcare, and we pay higher amount for healthcare, then its hard to say that lifestyle matches that of the 1960s.
I'd like to see changes in country that allowed the middle class to live easier lives, with less stuff, and more time.
I'm aware. 
