The next person that tells me that the rich have to pay higher taxes because it's "fair" is getting punched. 

I'm that tired of the refrain. 

If you raise taxes, history shows that people find better ways to hide the money so that revenue goes down and, because that cash isn't readily available and circulating, the conomy takes a hit.

When the hike you're requesting will fund the government for just over a week? You sound like a damned loon pushing this tired refrain. 

I'm looking at you, Tammy Baldwin. Media Trackers posted part of a letter she sent to President Obama urging for the Buffett Rule to be put in place:

As you continue to negotiate with Congressional Leaders on a compromise to avert automatic tax rate increases and funding cuts, we write to urge you to include our Paying a Fair Share Act in any deal. This legislation, which a majority of Senators voted to advance last April, would implement the so-called “Buffett Rule” by requiring multi-million-dollar earners to pay at least a 30% effective federal tax rate.

In remarks on April 11, 2012 urging Members of Congress to support our bill, you noted that, “one in four millionaires pays a lower tax rate than millions of hardworking middle-class households.” Such inequity, inexcusable at any time, has been compounded by the funding cuts in the Budget Control Act, which fall disproportionately on programs that help lower-income and middle-class families.

In addition to letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire for incomes above $250,000 as you have pledged to do, we believe it is imperative to enact a safeguard to ensure that the highest-earning Americans cannot subvert the progressivity of the tax code through loopholes and special rates not available to middle-class families. In addition to serving as that safeguard, our Paying a Fair Share Act would reduce the deficit by $47 billion, helping to avoid more painful budget options.

You know who's not paying their fair share, dear Tammy? The people leeching off the government while kicking in nothing for what they receive. How about you ask them to contribute but a modicum?

Or, even better, stop spending so damned much. 

Libertarian blogger Dr. Tim Nerenz has a spot-on piece on why this is such a problem:

The President just gave his State of the Labor Unions address (yawn) and announced that taxing the rich (yawn) will be the backbone of his new plan (yawn) to build the economy.  Funny, since he just decided we wouldn’t be building pipelines, power plants, drill rigs, Gibson guitars, planes in South Carolina, or cars that people actually want to buy.  I guess the economy is something else.       

[...]

Just in case there is one liberal somewhere whose brain is not bolted down to the deck of the U.S.S. Economic Suicide, let me try one more time to explain why increasing tax rates on the rich is a really bad idea, even though it might feel good to think they won’t miss a couple scoops out of their rain-money buckets.        

The Wall Street Journal did a recent piece on a 2007 Congressional Budget Office analysis of tax burdens – a CBO which was under the control of Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats at the time.  Nancy doesn’t bring up this particular tax study very often.       

CBO found that the average total tax rate of the top 1% was slightly less than 30% of their income, while the middle class paid an average tax rate of 15%, and poor people (bottom 20%) paid just under 5%.  It turns out that the rich indeed do not pay their fair share of taxes; they pay nearly twicetheir fair share. 

And if we raise the top marginal tax rates on the rich – as Democrats like Mr. Obama and Ms. Pelosi propose - it will increase the tax burden on the middle class.  That is not economic theory, it is economic history. 

He goes on to detail that history of failed attempts at "fairness" through higher taxes and redistribution. A spoiler: They all failed. Miserably. 

The cliche is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. 

Sad that nobody is paying attention.