After writing in a previous comment: "Add in California tax for Taplin 9.3%, and you have a marginal rate of 39.6 + 7.6 + 9.3= 56.5%"

"In short the there is a point where Government makes more of your salary than you do. Then there's carbon tax, sales tax, property tax, auto tax, transfer tax, toll roads, etc. etc. etc."

In the first sentence you are adding up marginal rates that exceed 50%, then saying whoa it's more of your salary than you can keep. That's an allusion to average rates, moreover, it's incorrect. The top marginal rate in the income tax is likely to apply to salaries over the payroll tax cap, so it is incorrect to add 7.6 (7.65, actually). It would be correct to add 2.9 (employer & employee combined) for the Medicare component of the payroll tax, if we were talking strictly about big salaries. On the other hand, as you know the really rich get capital gains taxed well below the top marginal rate. From the bogus summation of marginal rates you segue immediately into stuff that does not bite at the margin, which is why I say you conflate average and marginal, whether you know it or not.

Regarding the number of tax units in the top marginal rates, I provided a cite myself that contradicted the UI numbers, so you shouldn't pretend you've surprised me.

I never used the word "small" in regard to prospective changes in tax burdens. I did allude to the implied difference in rates of return on investment resulting from the higher marginal rate as, pardon the technical terminology, diddly-squat.

In short, Shooter is often in error but never in doubt.

Ellen -- Elie Wiesel?

oleeb -- 90% in the 50s when we had among our fastest rates of growth. 50% was good enough for Reagan, by the way, before he became president. Get rid of enough tax offsets and 40% is really all we need right now.

shooter242 -- I will pass on your hymnals to the rich and point out that in your factesque discussion of taxes you slide back and forth incoherently between marginal and average dimensions. You can add up all the marginal rates you like, it does not contradict the fact that Obama's proposal hardly alters the overall state of affairs regarding the incentives that obsess you. And a number of the taxes you cite, state taxes and taxes on other than income, have no bearing on Federal marginal income tax rates. And finally, the average total tax burden on the highest income class is not more than half -- for Federal taxes alone it's about 33 percent.

But thank you for inspiring my next post.

pavrovian dog -- the institution of charity is a tax on the virtuous.

ARG -- I would limit capped deductions to S&L income/property taxes, college expenses, children, & mortgage interest for the sake of practicality and not dropping a hammer on a lot of heads at the same time.

Yva -- No, I've been waiting for you. What is rich deserves a separate post.

LarryH, if that is your real name -- If you have my documents please burn them.

We'll be exposing more conspiracies in the future, assuming we are not ourselves in the conspiracy. Ha!

Resistance -- you must have heard a poor man never gave another man a job.

destor23 -- you want to mess up the whole economy just as President Obama is fixing everything? By the way, I could use that coat right now.

ARG -- shoot it in the head of course. A tire iron works too.

Yva -- call me.

As things stand the Obama budget is funded with the help of a modest increase on those at the top. As Purple State points out, it's not as if you get some giant Monty Python weight falling on your head when your income goes from $250,000 to $250,001. The top rate on the extra money, after the recession is over knock on wood, will be 39.6 cents on the dollar, plus 1.45 cents for the Medicare piece of the payroll tax.

There will be an issue of increases well down the road if we don't get a grip on health care spending, but for the time being the Obama budget adds up.

Note that absent the Obama budget we get screwed with private health insurance premium increases too. The problem is not too much government, but too much market in a service ill-suited to markets -- health insurance.

I count multiple bloopers in this sentence. You can't be serious.

I responded to one with some bitches about some of his decisions and got back a form letter encouraging me to go a web page to leave my message. When I got there I was invited to "tell us your story." Same kind of invitation to some local house parties. I guess we are supposed to sit around and talk about our hemorrhoids.

There is an issue if the money stops somewhere else first, like state governments, since they could filter some out for other purposes, which might be o.k. for stimulus but would be lost to transit.