Capital.

Editor,

Marginal tax rates over 90 percent during the Eisenhower years encouraged CEO's to pay their employees respectable wages because hoarding hundreds of times the wages of their employees would merely have shoveled those dollars to the IRS.

Rich people don't like to pay taxes and do not like to pay for government. Increasing marginal tax rates frees them from having to do either, provided they share the profits of their corporations more equitably in the form of fair wages and benefits.

Rich people who make virtually all of their money in the form of capital gains routinely rail against moochers who want "stuff" handed to them and do not want to work. Having money rain on your head because you own certain stocks or bonds is not working.

Let these individuals pay the same tax rates as people who do work.
(Seniors and others making less than $250,000 a year could continue to enjoy a low tax rate on capital gains.)

Raising marginal tax rates is about more than budget deficits, fairness, and big or small government; it is about encouraging efficient use of capital.

Re: "Politics Complicates the Math in Ending Tax Breaks for Rich" (11/21/2012)