Of taxes and deficits...

Fearing a soaring deficit, many analysts favor letting Bush tax cuts expire:

If all the tax cuts were extended, Congress would have to cut $325 billion in 2015 alone to get the deficit down to Obama's target of 3 percent of the gross domestic product. If the cuts were preserved only for the household incomes less than $250,000 a year, as Obama has proposed, Congress would still have to cut $255 billion.

 A new report by the Center for American Progress basically says that letting the Bush tax cuts expire will solve the deficit crisis and allow the federal budget to be balanced (not including interest payments on the debt) by 2015. So, who thinks that this will make all the deficit-hawks on the right start making the tough choices we need to make to get our country back on track?

I'm willing to endure an increase in my taxes to do it, I would hope that someone who makes roughly 5 times what my wife and I do would do the same.

UPDATE:

Upon further review, I don't think that I accurately described my position, or maybe I did and have been shown the issue from a different angle.

So here we go, round two.

I live in Iowa, east central Iowa to be precise, and in Iowa, making $250K a year may not make you rich, but it certainly makes you rather comfortable and more than able to put away a lot of money, buy a pretty nice house with some land attached to it, drive nice cars, etc., etc., etc.

That being said, it does not make you rich, nor does it make you wealthy. Now, if you happen to live in Chicago, $250K puts you in roughly the same boat that I am in, well, maybe slightly better depending on the suburb, or slightly worse should you choose to live in the city.  As with everything else, more often than not someone's open market value does not take the cost of living into account.

Now, could those making $250K and living in downtown Chicago move somewhere less expensive, sure, but there is certainly no guarantee that they could maintain their income by doing so, not to mention the fact that commuting to the same job in the city could have a pretty significant impact on the amount of time they get to spend with their families.

Should we raise the tax rate on earned income, perhaps not. However, I do feel strongly that there should be no breaks for interest/dividend income, there should be no tools that allow the mega rich to hide their money in the Cayman's or loopholes for them to escape their share of the community pot.

Honestly, I'd be fine leaving the earned income rates the same, or even lowering them, provided that cap gains, interest and dividend income were taxed at something approaching a reasonable rate.