on possibility for evasion or backlash by the rich

The Kennedy example shows that the overall amount of tax income received actually increased even as the top rate of tax was cut. Or in other words, if this process was reversed and the top rate of tax increased, the total amount of revenue the state would get would fall. This is the fundamental point the other side does not get. We’re not arguing that rich people should keep more of their money and the poor should take care of themselves. We are not arguing for winner-takes-all and if the losers are trampled to death by the rush of capitalists seeking to sell the feathers of the last Dodo on earth then so be it. We argue that the net benefit to society is greater if tax rates are not increased. Moreover, that the policy of increasing taxes whilst appealing to the poor, whilst having all the elements that make it a populist programme, is actually deeply counterproductive and likely to harm the very people it is designed to benefit. The fact is that rich people will respond to an increased rate of income tax. To deny this will happen is to reveal a fundamental lack of understanding about human nature. No-one likes paying taxes and just because rich people have a few millions doesn’t make them less likely to care about losing a few hundred thousand. Rich people will move their money or their person out of the burdensome tax regime to a more favourable one. They will take their spending and their income generation away. Or at the very least they will come up with elaborate schemes to avoid paying tax which the state will find prohibitively expensive to police. As many things in life the solution to this problem is counterintuitive. We don’t prevent illness by staying surgically pristine, we get a little dirty so our immune system can build up. The best form of defence is attack. And the best way to get more money flowing into a country is to have taxes set at a rate which people are willing to pay. P.S. Would it have made a difference to your argument if I had used Reagan’s tax reductions instead of Kennedy's? During the period of Reagan introducing tax cuts federal revenues increased significantly Revenues from individual income taxes climbed from just over $244 billion in 1980 to nearly $467 billion in 1990. Inflation-adjusted this amounts to a 25 percent increase.[[ Peter B. Sperry, The Real Reagan Economic Record: Responsible and Successful Fiscal Policy, The Heritage Foundation, 1st March 2001, http://www.heritage.org/research/taxes/bg1414.cfm%5D%5D This was despite slashing the top rate of income tax from 70 percent to 28 percent.[[ William A. Niskanen, Reaganomics, in The Concise Encyclopaedia of Economics, http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/Reaganomics.html%5D%5D “greed is NOT good and there very much IS such a thing as society and it needs helping and one way is to dramatically increase tax because people don't pay enough NOW.” Greed may not be good but it is in human nature, is to get rich still glorious? There is something called society, but society is not dependent on taxes, society still exists no matter what rate the rich pay. It would be much better for Society if as in the late 19th century there was low taxes (see response to ‘government's role in financial crisis’ below)and an immense amount of philanthropy. The government taking money does not demonstrate society, its free giving would.