[swampplanet]

No its not. Right now our corporate tax rate is 2nd only to Japan. What is happening is corporate flight from the US. I get emails every day proclaiming the low tax rates of Costa Rica and Panama. Heck even the UK's rate is almost half the US. Ad to that certain states like California and New York. So not only do the wealthy get taxed personally but also on their businesses. This is double taxation.

When the top 5% of the population pay over 80% of the taxes it is ludicrous to say they have a low tax burden. This doesn't even get into the question of lower taxes for capital. Perhaps if we looked at the entitlements which are growing all the time as this article points out, we would see why the tax burden is too large for everyone. (well not the 50% who pay no taxes at all).

The real deficit debate is how big of a government do we need not if the rich are paying their fair share. That debate is over, they pay more much more than their fair share.

[fapi1974]

The problem with the corporate tax rate argument lies in the difference between nominal tax rate and effective tax rate - US corporations pay far less in actual taxes than they are supposed to - which doesn't contradict your point about corporate flight, since tax haven shopping is a big part of why corps don't pay what they should. Not that corps are reflected in the graphic.

Also, the "Fair Share" thing is tough. I would argue that "Fair Share" should relate to the percentage of the country's wealth or economy controlled by the tax bracket, rather than the percentage of the population or even the percentage of yearly income represented by that group. Looked at that way, the upper brackets are getting a great deal.

Point taken on size of government. If you just believe the government should be smaller, then there is no reason to revert to historical mean taxation rates. However, my sense is that our social indicators for poverty, education, and health are so bad relative to other countries that it's hard to make the case that the status quo is adequate, much less excessive.

[swampplanet]

The only problem with your points are they have lead other countries to financial ruin. The one thing keeping this country from being Greece or Ireland or even worse Egypt (all I expect would rank higher on government sponsored entitlements) is that the dollar is the world's backup currency. When that stops and it will, there are already signs such as Russia, China and OPEC have met to discuss getting off of the dollar. Our government will no longer be able to just print money to pay for the growth of our government.

The clear lesson with Europe and now Japan is we cannot continue to over tax the capitalists and raise the entitlements.