Taxes on the top 1 percent of income earners should be increased

First: Capital gains and sales/excise taxes should be increased, becauseotherwise the current taxation system is regressive.Many arguments against raising taxes on the wealthy arebased in a fundamental misconception about the current state of taxation. Thecurrent taxation system, although it is intended to be progressive, is actuallyregressive, because of how low capital gains and sales/excise taxes are.Your eighth source shows this perfectly, actually. It pointsout that TEN of the states require those in the bottom 20% to pay 6 times morethan the wealthy. With all due respect, I think this shows you aren’t actuallypicking sources carefully/reading them through…While our income tax may be progressive, it hardly matters,because, when you factor in the other taxes, poor people get screwed incomparison to the wealthy. So complaints about progressive taxation are mootgiven the current taxation system, which is almost always regressive.Second: Taxes should be raised on the super-wealthy tocombat the market distortions caused by rent-seeking and other such practices.Rent-seeking is a general term for practices on the part ofthe wealthy that channel money from the poor to the rich. This siphoning occursmost often when regressive taxation runs rampant, as it does now. With such a comparativelylarge portion of money coming from the poor, this money gets reinvested intothe economy. How does it get reinvested? It is rarely redistributed back to thepoor. Far more often, massive sums of money are used to bail out wealthypeople.During the 2008 economic downturn, predatory bankers, orgenerally those in the financial sector, were bailed out massively by thegovernment. For example, Citigroup was given 476.2 billion dollars [1]. Instark contrast, the government only spends 550-600 billion dollars a year onaverage [2], far far less than the money spent on all of the bank bailouts whenyou add them together. When so much of the government’s money comes from thepoor, since our current system is regressive, and this money gets redistributedback to the wealthy bankers, money is siphoned to the top and the market is distorted.The economy does well when people spend and reinvest in theeconomy. With the combination of the aforementioned regressive taxation and itsnot being redistributed back to the poor, the poor are unjustly dealt with andour economy suffers. Bailing out bankers to combat economic crises may benecessary, but it has to be countered by far greater taxes on the wealthy intimes of economic stability.Third: Taxes should be raised on the super-wealthy to combatunreasonable inequality that damages our economy and fix the deficit.Sub Point 1: Inequality of income hurts spending and leadsto depressions and recessions. Conversely, periods of relative equality haveexperienced rapid growth.Economic growth is only 2.8% in the last 30 years as opposed to 3.6% growth in the preceding 30 years. This corresponds with the post-1980 skyrocketing inequality, AKA the "Great Divergence" [3].Sub Point 2: Greater taxation on the super-wealthy will cutthe deficit.CEOs can earn up to 252 times what their employees do. Honestly, I don't think I need to argue this point very much, it is very clear that the amount of revenue that would be earned from higher taxation on the super-wealthy is extremely massive.Fourth: America is NOT a "land of opportunity" when money is siphoned from the poor to the rich by regressive taxation, and the poor do not HAVE opportunities.If America were a land of opportunity for those in all walks of life, either poor or rich, chances of, say, winding up in the top 10 percent would be the same for a child who comes from a more poor and less educated family as one who comes from a richer and more educated family. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Economic mobility is very tied to socioeconomic background, in the U.S. moreso than any other advanced industrial country [4]. Especially since the 1980s, which again corresponds with the Reaganite lowering of taxes and skyrocketing of inequality, economic mobility has greatly decreased.This is directly indicative of the fact that, contrary to what we would like to believe as Americans, our system in fact is not one of equal opportunity. America should become a land of opportunity- not by reducing social welfare and progressive taxation, but by increasing these things, in order to create an even socioeconomic playing field and thus ensure as equal as possible chances for poor and for rich children.Sources:[1] http://www.foxbusiness.com...[2] http://www.usgovernmentspending.com...[3] http://en.wikipedia.org...[4] http://www.bostonfed.org...