The WSJ:  Take everything they earn, and it still won’t be enough
Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for
the economy and “the wealthiest 2%.” Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above
$200,000 in 2006. (That’s about 7% of all returns; the data aren’t broken down at the $250,000 point.)
These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income
receipts. The richest 1% — about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 — paid some $408 billion, or
39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income…
But let’s not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let’s go all the way. A tax policy that
confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would
only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That’s less than half the 2006 federal
budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in
fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable “dime” of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have
barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123561551065378405.html

Kleiner Nachtrag :

Wenn man den neuen König ohne Kleider mal 2 Wochen von den Fernsehkameras fernhalten könnte würde es vielleicht sogar eine Aktienrally geben -:(