They already get taxed 35% in the highest tax bracket. They pay more than everyone else... anything after that is penalizing people for success. People forget that all that extra money is spent on creating jobs ... even if they are blowing on weekends in vegas it supports the economy

Exactly, all spending in general supports the economy, but one thing (although I hate to agree with it), that my dad brought up a while back is how taxing somebody and using that money also supports the economy as it is still going into the economy.

As much as they can. Screw the rich. lol

See my problem with people who say this is you will some day do something and become one of those and magically no longer want them to have super high taxes.

Scandinavia has a very strong economy and one of the lowest Gini coefficients (income inequality) in the world. Taxing the rich heavily doesn't necessarily have to lead to a weak economy. It's not enough to tax the rich though. You have to manage funds properly as well in order to keep the economy healthy and reduce income inequality. I talked to a guy in Finland on welfare who complains about being poor and he has a gaming rig (no game consoles but he's a PC gamer so), buys the occassional PC game (doesn't pirate everything), high-speed internet, lives on his own, has a big HDTV and he owns a better cellphone than me. It's possible that he may have had savings built up but still. I don't know about you but Scandinavia sounds like it kicks ass for poor people. And their women are sexy as hell. Too bad I don't know any of their languages. lol. Videogames (console systems and console games anyway. Maybe it's different for PC games) are more expensive in Europe though (boo). Must be the import taxes or something.

He's on welfare and buys all that shit? This is why I don't like welfare, why should a tax payer buy him a HDTV, cellphone, and high-speed internet?

Scandinavian countries are rather unique in that they work paritally because of their size and specialization of their workforce.

There is a reason why EVERYBODY tries to copy Denmark yet it never works.

Of course, it may not work for Denmark anymore either, they went from 4% unemployment to 8% in the crisis... and their economy is at risk of outsourcing.

Denmark's strengths lie in it's ability to let buisnesses grow and shrink at will by hiring and firing employees whenever they want and by having so many people qualified to do the same stuff.

norway has 3.5% unemployment. The crisis didnt seem to affect much

Not sure what that has to do with Denmark.

Though yeah, Norway was able to avoid the crisis because their interest rates weren't at stupid low levels... and they were able to drop them and actually increase demand.

Also, much like Denmark, Norway has an extremely flexable workforce.

Bigger countries CAN'T have such workforces... and as White collar jobs are outsourced out of western countries.. Norway like Denmark faces trouble.

It should also be noted that countries like Norway have some of the least corrupt governments and are not fiscal basket-cases like many of the countries that were hardest hit by the financial meltdown were ...