A very good article on recent tax proposals, from CNN

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/04/news/economy/colvin_rich.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009050504

This part I find especially important to pay attention to:

The flaw in that definition of rich is that plenty of families making $250,000 a year don't feel rich. They probably see themselves as upper middle class, especially if they live in blue-state coastal cities and suburbs. An income of $250,000 is a lot richer in Abilene, Texas, than in New York's Nassau County, where it takes $430,000 to enjoy a similar quality of life, according to bankrate.com. So let's call them the "working rich."

One thing many people never take into account when getting whipped up into a populist fervor about the 'wealthy' who fit into the $250,000+ tax bracket is the cost of living for the people making this money. Yes, they may live in a mansion by comparison to their lower earning fellows, but they pay out the nose to keep up on their mortgage for that mansion. Yes, they may have a complex climate control system in their house, but that climate control system shows up on their electrical bills every month. Their quality of life, overall, may really be better than the economically unfortunate, but that isn't a justification to tax them more. Changes in their taxation rate may have the exact same bankrupting effect it would have on someone pulling in $42,000 a year (the national mean) because, even though they make much more, the bills they pay are usually proportionately more.

That isn't to say they should pay no taxes at all or anything like that, they ought to pay their fair share just like anybody else, but we should remind ourselves that we haven't walked a mile in their shoes (or sat at their desk sometime before April 15th) before we use their wealth as an excuse to hate them.