The problem with this approach is that you ignore the whole "division of labor" which has only been the driver of all human progress from the time we were monkeys to today, making it kind of important. If the smarter guy spends time making his own burger when the burger flipper could be doing it, then what is the burger flipper going to do? Suck the smarter guy's cock for money? And that time the smarter guy spends making his own burger is time he doesn't spend doing whatever higher-value activities he'd otherwise be doing. The combination of self-righteousness and lack of logic in posts like yours is truly depressing, especially since I know there are people who really believe that crap.
How about the optimum tax rate being the rate which generates sufficient government revenue to pay for whatever benefits the "wealthy" receive from the government? Get a million bucks in government benefits? Then pay a million bucks in tax. Get a few thousands in benefits? Pay a few thousand. If you look at who actually benefits from government spending, you'll find that the average high-income person gets shafted. That's what "redistribution" is. According to some studies I've seen, the average American making $100K+ pays more in federal income tax than they get in assorted benefits. Obviously, some assumptions go into the model when allocating benefits, but that seems about right to me. Other than the same government-provided services everyone uses, like roads and whatever my share of the benefit of having our military's protection, I don't use anything the government provides and certainly not to the tune that they extract taxes from me. I don't stand for it when companies give me less in value than what I pay for their goods and services, why should I stand for it when it's "the government"? The government isn't anything special. Government is just people, and usually people of the worst, most lazy, sort.
The problem is that 99.9% of our "smarter guys" aren't any smarter than our "burger flipper". They're just luckier, or more sociopathic. Their egos maybe bigger, but that's about it. The ones that actually have real talent dont go on whining about such things, because they know they actually earned their money instead of conning their way into, inheriting it, getting real lucky, or gaming the system. This is why you see some of those with high earnings promoting higher taxes for their own income bracket. This will always be the case with our most talented. You can't buy talent. No need to whine about taxes if you have the security of talent, money comes too easy. If you were born with little or not talent there's still great opportunity in a country such as this. But the means of acquiring wealth for those without talent is much less secure. That's why the situation will always be the less the talent a high income earner has the more the whining you will hear from them about cap rate taxes. How secure is the money someone earned as an executive where they were pretty much worthless or did no better than pretty much anyone off the streets could pull off for 5% of the wages(the majority unfortunately). They may never see this opportunity again. Why should they they're talentless? Anyone with more than an ounce of talent will clearly sees all this information that unfortunately seems to elude many of you.
Most talent is capped. Deliberately. To pass the test of wealth admission usually requires passing a test showing sociopathic tendencies. By design (skull & bones, masonry, are some of the paths). Although there are exceptions to that rule, the XY generation is largely subject to it. Some of the boomers rode their wave and skated through the cracks. Of course it also depends on how much an individual is monitored. I am one who is. Many others are as well. The monitoring on me was so bad, they actually attacked my trades. I can scarcely believe that myself even though I learned that it was true.
IMO, the poll question is somewhat ambiguous. Is the question about the average tax rate for those high earners ? Or the marginal tax rate above $1M ? This makes a big difference. I would say that about 35 to 40% average tax rate would sound about right for $1M. At $1M I would think about 50% marginal rate would make sense. I think there is room for higher marginal rates beyond the $1M level of income. I am not in this $1M earning category, but I'm in the top 3% of earners this year. My payroll marginal tax bracket is around 40% in California. But my average tax rate is only around 25% after I deduct the mortage interest and taxes on my mansion. I think the most obvious thing to do is to apply Medicare and SS taxes to all income, rather than just wage income. The current situation where non-wage earners don't pay these taxes makes no sense whatsoever. The cap on taxable SS income also doesn't make sense, IMO, and disproportionately penalizes 90% of americans who don't hit this cap. If there was no cap, no one would be talking about SS insolvency, and the SS tax rate could even be lowered. Oh, and of course, on the spending side, stop funding stupid wars of choice. Military should be for defense, not offense.
Says you. The Russians already tried this whole "the only thing that guy who's boss has is luck (or tradition or religion) on his side" and tried to replace "management" with "labor". We saw how that worked out. The only question is why are you so stupid as to think it will work this time? The Russians implementing Communism were about a thousand times smarter than you are and they couldn't make it work. You "99%ers" are a bunch of drama queens. If the 1% were truly as ruthless as you say they are, there would be about a 100 million fewer of you in this country and the rest of you would be scared sh!tless to complain.
You have no clue and barely marginal intelligence. A monkey could run a business better than the majority of our executives, and no doubt better than you. Would you like to see more failure, bankruptcy, bailouts, and still the executives with their hands out(where's my bonus? ahaha!) There are some with talent but it is by far the exception not the rule. Continue being a talentless whiner.
And yet, despite these "monkeys" running major US corporations, you are not running one. Clearly your superior intelligence should have brought you to the top of a corporate hierarchy by now, no? Oh, wait, right, you don't WANT to run a major corporation and get paid far more than you are worth cuz you don't want to sell out to the man, right? See, the thing is, you aren't as intelligent as you think you are. Nor will you ever be. Funny thing is, I actually have participated in strategy-setting sessions for major (think Dow Jones Industrial Average components) corporations and I've thought to myself that maybe the "rank and file" should get to participate so that they could see that the execs are really doing their best and the fact is that developing strategy is actually hard stuff. Then I read comments like yours and realize that the "rank and file" are idiots and having them participate would just be a waste of time. Despite the fact that the "99%" think they are getting cheated, the fact is that they are making out like bandits relative to their actual worth. You want to talk about "luck"? How about the luck that morons like you have in having been born in an era when there is no slavery, since you would CLEARLY have been slaves in an earlier era?
You're a fool, please get some level of education. At least complete your high school diploma. I'm not sure it would help someone with your limited mental capacity, but it's better than nothing. Your thinking is at such a low level that i'm not sure if you're just an ape who was taught to type. Someone born into poverty in this era could just as well have been born an emporer in another. Would you rather be as dumb as you currently are and rich, or actually have some real intelligence and poor? I already know which choice you would make. You fail to consider that if you had intelligence, even half as much as i have, money would come all too easy. I'm not sure why i'm wasting my time arguing with a talentless fool.
I've got plenty of money. I wouldn't say it came easy, but it came. I'm still trying to figure out what objective measure of intelligence makes you think that you're so smart. You don't seem to realize that you can't just say you're intelligent, other people have to say you're intelligent for it to matter. Better yet, pay you for being intelligent. And if you were actually being paid for your intelligence, you'd also think it was BS that the government was taking that payment and redistributing it to others who didn't work for it. I make more in a week than the average person on the planet makes in a year. Do you? So, the bottom line is, you're either a useless parasite or an idiot.