There's a huge difference between the rich and high income earners. The rich/wealthy often favor higher taxes because their income is from tax-free bonds or from control of assets, where income is deferred and usually part of a one-time transaction, like sale of a company, where taxes can be avoided.
High-income earners, on the other hand, often have negative net worth (school and housing debt). The rich want high taxes on the high-income earners because they don't want the upstarts competing with them for control of assets...they want to make it harder for the next wave of entrepreneurs to build disruptive or competitive businesses.
It is ironic, but taxes on new capital formation directly benefit those who already have capital.
This is an astute and important point. I have always found it flawed that a middle-class American family making around $100K in income will pay more taxes than someone with $10M+ portfolio of municipal bonds.
With that said, I agree with Mark Cuban's philosophy here, and do not get personally upset with paying taxes.
I don't think the solution is to complain about taxes on high income earners. Rather, there just needs to be more pressure on instituting equivalent taxes for other forms of wealth generation (i.e. get rid of tax-free bonds).
Most self-made rich people get there by (I'll bet you've heard this before...) making something people want. It's a rare buyer who buys something for $20 and values it at exactly $20 -- most buyers think it's worth a little more, or a lot more. That difference means that most purchases are not only beneficial to the maker/inventor (who is making money on the transaction), but also to the buyer (who believes their life will be better because of the transaction).
So, if you set everything else equal (purchase of goods and services, payment of taxes, etc.) the self-made rich are doing a lot more for others than the rich-by-inheritance.
You're telling me that the guy who founded girls gone wild (and became fabulously wealthy thereby) did more good than someone like Eunice Shriver who never held a paid job in her life?
The bottom line is that it's infinitely more important what you do with your wealth than whether it was handed to you or you earned it.
a dollar made at the end of a gun and a dollar made because the purchase was a pareto improvement aren't the same thing. that you could equate the two means that you equate logos and pathos.
That may be true, but the inherited rich are contributing to society by investing capital. The self-made rich wouldn't have made it if a venture capital firm wasn't willing to fund them in the initial stages, or the bank wasn't willing to provide a loan, or institutional investors weren't willing to buy IPO shares.
High-income earners, on the other hand, often have negative net worth (school and housing debt). The rich want high taxes on the high-income earners because they don't want the upstarts competing with them for control of assets...they want to make it harder for the next wave of entrepreneurs to build disruptive or competitive businesses.
It is ironic, but taxes on new capital formation directly benefit those who already have capital.