[quote=Veritas]I hope you are right about small business. As they go, so goes the economy and jobs.[/quote]

I don’t know any small business owners who make > 1 million. The average small business owner makes about 230K/yr (source: WSJ), and this includes all businesses with 500 or fewer employees. And, of course, the additional tax is only at the margin – their taxable earnings on the amount of their salary under a million is exactly the same.

Finally, of course, is that the past 8 years have seen the lowest tax rates on the wealthy (by a significant margin) on both capital gains and salary since WW II. It doesn’t appear like the nation suffered unduly before when the rich were being soaked to the tune of far higher marginal rates on both cap gains and salary.

Neither, for that matter, did the rich, though a few decades ago, the CEO’s had to make do with only earning annually 10-20x the average salary of their employees – instead of the 100x multiplier that seems common today. Amazingly enough, it appears that not making insane amounts of dough failed to make them decide to either quit or stop growing their companies. Turns out making LOTS of dough is still worth their while.