Taxing the rich won't erase the deficit, Mr. President

Estimates by nonpartisan groups such as the Urban Institute and Tax Policy Center show that without any serious efforts to cut spending, tax rates on the wealthiest people earning $200,000 or more — the group targeted by President Obama — would have to rise to prohibitive levels of between 77 percent and 91 percent just to bring the yearly budget deficit down to manageable levels of around 2 percent to 3 percent of economic output…

The nearly half of U.S. citizens who paid no federal income taxes last year is up from around 40 percent of non-payers just five years ago, suggesting that the long-standing trend toward tilting taxes toward the rich is gathering speed, he said.

“At this rate of increase, by 2012 the majority of voters won’t be taxpayers,” yet many of them will be getting benefits from the government, Mr. Brines said.