> Oh really - how much extra do they pay?

That's a silly argument. There's nothing inconsistent about believing that it would be better off for the country as a whole if tax rates are higher, but not volunteering to personally pay higher than the current actual rate.

You play the game by the current rules, not the rules you are advocating the game change to.

> There's nothing inconsistent about believing that it would be better off for the country as a whole if tax rates are higher, but not volunteering to personally pay higher than the current actual rate.

If the country would be better off with $100B additional tax revenue, it would be better off with $5B additional tax revenue.

They mean taxes are too low. 2 ways to make up a deficit: Raise taxes or cut services. They want the deficit fixed, and they want it done through taxes.

> They mean taxes are too low. 2 ways to make up a deficit: Raise taxes or cut services.

Interesting that you equate spending with services.

The deficit is spending - revenues. The latter are only slightly connected to rates, especially the top marginal rate.[1]

Are they looking to get more revenues from the 50% of the population that isn't paying much of anything or the 1-2% which is paying 40% of revenues?

Which reminds me - while the top marginal rate has jumped around a lot, the "tax revenue as a fraction of GDP" hasn't managed to top 21% for very long and tends to stick around 18%.

We're currently spending around 25% of gdp. Why will we be able to hit that with tax revenue?

[1] The estate tax has never been, and never will be, a significant revenue source. The very rich don't die often enough and they engage in significant estate planning. The estates of the rich folks who died in 2010 weren't going to pay much in taxes because they did estate planning in previous years.

I'm not particularly interested in talking tax policy on HN as I view a great majority of it offtopic. If you'd like to hit reddit.com/r/politics, I'll talk till the cows come home.