The issue isn't raising taxes on the rich. That really won't help. Every time we've lowered taxes for the rich, the percentage of income taxes we've gathered from them has actually gone up. Not down.
The real issue is cutting of subsidies and tax credits to the rich. Some of the richest people pay less than the middle class because they are given huge credits because of one thing or another. They have great accountants, too.
In reality, if we imposed a flat tax that offered virtually no subsidies, no incentives for particular behaviors, we would likely collect a lot more, and would ensure that those not paying wouldn't be able to dodge taxes.
Furthermore, fixing the tax code won't fix the entire problem. We had a $1.5 trillion deficit in the last year alone. Put it this way, under George W. Bush, our debt increased by $5 trillion dollars. Obama's increase in the deficit was 1/3rd of that in just one year.
To fix it, we do have to increase revenues by reforming the tax code, but also slash every single budget that the government has. Jon Stewart's Ryan rebuttal is a tragedy, because you can't really project future revenues all that well by changing the tax code, because we've seen that it rarely follows along expected forecasts. The only known quantity in a budget are actual outlays in spending, which is far more stable. Therefore, the more responsible thing to do is to cut spending. Of course, a lot of people hate doing that, because you can tax and reduce spending on anyone, until it effects you. We've seen that happen to horrible results all over the Western world when the government has had to introduce austerity measures.
And if you want information about tax rates and correlation of tax revenues:
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
