Taxes are an easy subject to bring up yet a pain in the ass to expertly deal with them and find a solution everyone agrees with, The reason America is in debt is because the people who can actually afford to part with a healthy chunk of their money pay around as much as the people who can't afford to pay, who live paycheck to paycheck. There are not enough assets/liquid money in the US to pay the debt even if every single citizen sold everything they owned and lived naked n the streets and starved to death. So while the rich could probably do with a bit more taxing it's not the solution to the current problem. It does encourage investment if you have more secured income, yes. It's logical that the more extra money you have, the more it could probably be invested in something. Which in turn does help the economy.