[Professor S]

First I'd like to thank you for your thorough and level headed response.

I understand why you would want the rich to pay a higher percentage than the poor, if in the end the result was higher revenue to the government. But according to the CBO charts Bond posted earlier in this thread, thats not the case. Revenue actually increased a percent when taxes were lowered on the wealthy. The leading explanation is that when taxes or lowered, more wealth enters the economy and in the end more revenue is created by taxing more wealth less.

Lowering capital gain taxes has been proven to increase revenue to the government by more than that.

So my question is this: If raising taxes lowers revenue in many cases (not all), then to what end do we raise those taxes? Is it fairness? If so, is the purpose of our tax system a means to exact social justice, or solely a means to create revenue to run the government?