re: #1 Romantic Heretic

Um, maybe the people talking about raising taxes, like myself, are talking about raising them on people and entities whose income has been rising while their tax burden has been falling.

A little factoid I read once states that in the late 50s to early 60s jointly held stock companies carried thirty to forty percent of the tax burden in the West depending on which country they were in. By the early 90s they carried ten to fifteen percent.

Here’s an interesting article from Business Insider on tax rates and the economy.

Personal observation: if you want to live and work in a country you have to pay for the privilege.

The problem is that you can’t raise taxes on those wealthy people high enough to avoid the sequester without causing capital flight and crashing the economy. Ways have to be found to cut non-defense spending.