Welcome to a progressive tax system (and one of the lowest of all the first world nations).
What is their reward for working so hard? Well, yes, their marginal tax rates go up – but so do yours and mine. Their reward is that they make more money of course (and probably have increased chances for promotion, etc). Yes, the government takes a slightly larger share of their “new” earnings, but they are still making more than they were before.
Heck, we ALL go through this. You know what? The money still spends even when the government takes a slightly larger share of it, and it’s still worth working for. Does the government take too much? Maybe – there are certainly a LOT of things the current administration is spending money on that I don’t care for (e.g. the war, the enormously bloated military budget, the 400bn per year we throw away as finance charges to the supersized debt, etc). However, I DON’T have a direct say in those, and while I may vote for people who are for reducing the parts of government I don’t care for, I accept that, in our system of government, there are equally those who want to reduce parts I don’t want to see reduced, and that LIKE the war spending, and the bloated military budget, etc, and the fact of the matter is that the budget will always be a compromise.
Given the way the system works, I’d much rather pay for what we owe – and currently, that means we NEED a tax increase. And, frankly, the lower middle class and below can’t afford that tax increase. So, unfair as it is, the tax WILL be paid by those who CAN afford it. Frankly, though Obama is not proposing taxing my particular bracket, I KNOW I can far more easily afford to pick up a slightly larger share of the tax burden than a household making, say, 50-60K/yr. I strongly suspect those making twice what I do can probably afford it even more.
When it comes down to it, we ARE a society. The REASON people can make these extraordinary incomes is BECAUSE of our shared society, which they should realize they have a larger investment in than someone who is poor or lower middle class.
