Hmm...the Very Rich tend to be Republican, since they're the ones that most republican policies actually help out. I wonder how much of the Republican base follows them because they are Super Rich, and therefore know how to be successful. America does tend to treat wealth as if it were nobility.
Like Soros, Buffet, Gates, the founder of Google? Bloomberg?
The funny thing is, taxes don't even hurt the super wealthy. They already made their bones. Taxes stop anyone from following them up the ladder, because we tax various forms of income rather than the absolute amounts of wealth already possessed.
Err, Bloomberg actually *is* a Republican.
And you're absolutely right....income tax doesn't hurt the uberwealthy, it's things like inheritance taxes and capital gains taxes that do. Which is why the Republican Party considers them an abhorrence unto God and will never, never, NEVER increase them. Or why Paul Ryan's tax plan called for eliminating capital gains taxes altogether, which would have put Mitt Romney's effective tax bracket at 0.85%.
Capital gains tax increases wouldn't hurt Mitt. He already has $250 million. Capital gains come from
gains in that wealth. Income. Not salaried income, true, but cap-gains is still not a wealth tax. No gains that year? No gains taxes. A few nations like France have a true wealth tax of a measly 1% or so, but the fact is, all the class-warriors are being sold a bill of goods. Most of their measures merely stop
new billionaires from arising, not knocking down those already minted.
Estate taxes in a true wealth tax, of course, but it's not really the sort of thing that frightens types like Soros and Buffett, who plan to master the universe before they die. The wealthy easily escape that by setting up their heirs comfortably before they die, anyway.