>>Oh really, you say that people were happy and proud to give 90% of everything they earned to the government? Please site something factual to back this up please. If this is merely your opinion, that is fine - you are entitled to it but please do not state it as if it were fact.

LOL. Whether you choose to disbelieve that they saw it as a civic duty and therefore as a source of pride, is not the precedent that matters. You insisted that it was WWII and not the New Deal that ended the Depression. I'm simply observing an apparent clash between that claim and an opposite recipe you claim will end this one. There's been no shortage of war in recent years so perhaps I've identified the real missing ingredient. Sheesh, this is your example so you might respond with facts rather than lecturing others about the need to provide facts.

>>In an economy where small business has to survive on tighter and tighter margins, how do you expect them to be able to hire new people (In this country, small business is the source of the majority of new jobs)? If you tax their captial gains at a higher rate, they have less money to put back into the business and, therefore, cannot hire more employees. Do you want this terrible economy to last forever?

LOL. I've been talking about the importance of small business for years here on UT. Obama is in the same boat as shown by his payroll tax changes that are of great value to small business (or at least to small business that employs other people) and his other federal initiatives to cut red tape that have drawn cautious approval from small business representatives, even those who vote Republican, and now you're in the boat too, though it seems you want to act as if others are in a different boat. ;-)

>>There is nothing that prevents Warren Buffet from mailing a big fat check to the IRS if he wants to.

Yes, yes, that is the usual non-response that I raised in my post... IMHO it's little different from retorting that if people aren't happy with the President's policies there is nothing to stop them moving to some other more acceptable jurisdiction. Yawn.

>> However, it is not that he wants to pay more in taxes. He wants everyone else to pay more in taxes.

No, he wants billionaires like himself to pay more than 17%. Perhaps he might be willing to pay the same % of all incoming $ as (say) a middle manager with 2 kids who dreams of buying a house in the suburbs one day. Would that be fair?

>>The big problem is that Obama considers anyone who makes more than $200,000 to be rich. That is the number he has thrown around since he was candidate Obama. $200,000 is not rich and this would effect a great number of small business owners.

I presume we both know that $200K makes it easier to purchase appreciating capital items than $70K or even $100K. As long as everybody on $200K is taxed the same, relative positions in comparison to the other >$200K Joneses will be unchanged. Whereas somebody on $75K with 3 kids still can expect a much harder road even if they enjoy some tax breaks. It's easy enough to label the person on $75K a loser who could earn more if he/she was smarter, but the fact is that we need Mr $75K and it simply isn't fair to tax his family at a higher rate than people who have enough $ to invest in capital items and who seem to resent paying more than 15%, or 17% overall in Buffett's case.

Sheesh, nobody really likes the idea of paying more tax themselves. But the Ponzi scheme demanded by previous generations has reached its inevitable conclusion. The $ has to come from somewhere and we all know (or should know) what happens if an elite jealously guards its advantages while others stop believing in the social compact.