"This is a perfect example of punishing people for working hard and taking personal responsibility."

And your post is an example of unexamined privilege. Why do you assume that the things you have are a result of mostly working hard and personal responsibilty rather than mostly an accident of birth? Or at least a combination of both? Or that those that don't have what you have are by implication not hard working and not responsible?

I don't understand why so many people who have so clearly benefited from our society have the attitude of "fuck you, I have mine" when they are expected to support that society that enabled their success. Why are you afraid of being considered well off when you are? Why is supporting society considered bad? Try not to be an example of someone who was born on base and assumes that they got a hit....

Right, because income tax is the only possible method that the government can use to obtain funds. There aren't any possible [wikipedia.org] methods [wikipedia.org] that would tax the rich more than the poor without making the rich feel unfairly taxed..

I understand from your comments below that you felt you were mistaken, but I find your comment here and the high rating very interesting.
I'm wondering what the driving force is for people who don't make $200K, indeed anywhere near it, that causes them to try to protect the people who make over $500K.
In short, there are lots of regular joes who want to pamper multi-millionaires.
I see this very often. I find it confusing when these regular joes aren't actually in the bracket they're trying to protect, and most likely (looking at the quantity of persons who are in the bracket v. quantity of supportive joes) won't even reach the bracket. And... the people who are in the privileged bracket are already taking very good care of themselves because of the power afforded them by their bracket. And... they're doing it at the expense of or at least in disregard of the people in the regular joes bracket.
Can one of you regular joes who wants to support multi-millionaires explain to me what motivates you? I doubt it's because you have a lord-loving serf attitude. Maybe you believe you will be uber-wealthy before long? Maybe you identify with the multi-millionaires, feeling like others are always getting you down and being a drag on you?

Let's see who comes crashing down, the US with its libertarians or the EU with its Eurocrat Eurosocialists. Care to take any bets, fuckstick? The fun thing about watching Europe disintegrate over the coming decades under the weight of their ridiculous social services burden with their shrinking native population growth and influx of poor immigrants will be the riots. You take one penny of social services or outrageous work benefits from a European and he'll riot like a motherfucker at the drop of a hat.

To whom, exactly, are you referring?
-jcr

I can't believe that there are asshats like you that advocate income taxes on anyone, regardless of what they're earning. Penalizing people for their success in the market is how you retard growth, savings, and investment. If you want to have the right incentives in place, then tax what people spend, not what they earn.

I'm not finding it hard to make ends meet. No one said that or anything like that. I'm making two points. One, making $200,000 is not at all like having million dollar homes or yachts. Anyone can do this. There's no reason to punish people for being successful, responsible producers in this economy. Second, these people are the ones who are productive in this economy, they put their money to use in useful ways and many help create other jobs. They are not people whose throats ought to be slashed by the government simply because they can't control their spending habits.