Obama's Tax Plan

Stephen Moore writes in the Wall Street Journal:

My contacts at the Treasury Department tell me that for the first time in decades, and perhaps ever, the richest 1% of tax filers will have paid more than 40% of the income tax burden. The top 50% will account for 97% of all federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% will have paid just 3%.

But Barack Obama has decided the rich still don't pay enough. He would redistribute the tax burden even more heavily on small business owners and the entrepreneurial class (two-thirds of the tax filers in the highest income tax bracket are small-business owners.)

But... History has demonstrated time and again that raising tax rates on the wealthy in the name of "redistribution" leads to so much income shifting, reduced work and investment, and redeployment of money into tax shelters, that the rich usually pay less, not more taxes, at higher rates.

Economist Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University has shown that in 1970, when the highest tax rate was 70%, the top 1% shouldered 16.7% of the income tax burden. Today the top tax rate is 35% and the same class of taxpayers pays a whopping 39% of the burden. The worst way to "soak the rich," Mr. Hubbard finds, is to raise tax rates.

Ah, so the wealthy small business owners get their taxes doubled and subsequently lay off a few million workers, creating the need for more welfare and government handouts... And sooner or later Obama needs to raise taxes on us middle class folk, too. Unfortunately we don't have the financial options of the rich.

I know we need to elect Obama because he's black, but couldn't we have picked a man of color who isn't a flaming socialist?