excerpt from the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/business/economy/27policy.html?th&emc=th
About Obama budget proposal....

"That agenda starts with taxes. Over the last three decades, the pretax incomes of the wealthiest households have risen far more than they have for other households, while the tax rates for top earners have fallen more than they have for others, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

As a result, the average post-tax income of the top 1 percent of households has jumped by roughly $1 million since 1979, adjusted for inflation, to $1.4 million. Pay for most families has risen only slightly faster than inflation.

Before becoming Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers liked to tell a hypothetical story to distill the trend. The increase in inequality, Mr. Summers would say, meant that each family in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution was effectively sending a $10,000 check, every year, to the top 1 percent of earners."

I say its time that they start paying a fair rate. My understanding is that the top 1% pays less that 17% tax rate and yet us middleclass average 30%.

Years ago, great men built Libraries, and Schools, and Hospitals. Now the rich build mansions in paradises, buy 20,000 dollars purses for their teenage daughters and 200,000 cars for themselves. They are not "great" men. Only great consumers, Selfish men. And they cry foul, whenever asked to pay their fair share of taxes. Taxes that build roads, and educate children, and build infrastructure that makes our lives healthy and safe, like power lines, and sewer lines and airports. And pay for the men and women who protect our borders, and our city streets and our forests (though if they get hurt or grow old, we fail to supply with enough resources to be cared for, housed, or even fed)

IF YOU ARE PROUD OF THIS COUNTRY, THEN YOU SHOULD BE HAPPY TO PAY YOUR FAIR SHARE!