>>7
Taxing the rich works as well as un-taxing the rich: not very so. The real problem is that fewer rich people today are rich because they actually do anything functional for their country's finances. They bet on a market that is locally stagnated to a consumer economy, not a production economy, while the production economy has been moving away. Ultimately, however, the reason they're rich is that they're smart enough to know how to make good money and how not to lose it doing foolish things. (Conversely, that's why the stock market near-collapse the housing crisis and the bank crisis mostly affected people who were not so well-off. Additionally, the deck was stacked against them in that the people who would be looking out for the not-so-rich were replaced, over time, with people who only cared that a profit and notoriety could be made, even if only in the short term. Other replacements knew what they were doing too - many of the people who used to work for Goldman Sachs who now work for the White House, for example.) Milking the rich will only work for a time and its results will be as illusory as what we currently cling to. It's the same short-term goal that got a lot of people into financial distress.
The problem is really the kind of economy we have. Production of goods that we can send overseas is the key. Raw materials, if nothing else. At this point, I would even shoot myself in the foot and settle for a socialistic approach to that ends but our government doesn't believe in the approach at all. "Energy economy?" Domestic entirely and its immediate result would be sending more industry overseas to smart countries who did not adopt them. Additionally, you wouldn't be able to export intangible "energy" to countries that aren't physically connected to yourself? Cut federal intervention in local affairs, give back most of the reserved land the central government owns but does nothing with thus that the states can do something with them, and force the government to do what it SHOULD be doing: manage our international image and military strength (military owned by each State, they allow the government to send en masse).
Hell, the government is suppose to make sure the States trade freely with each other; that's in the Constitution. There wasn't a single Congressional or Senatorial outcry against states that were calling and preparing to enact boycotts against Arizona that I can think of. The government didn't even have the resources to handle an oil spill - an accident - and, while I can't blame the current administration for having gotten rid of those resources, whenever that was, I'm damn going to blame them for not realizing they didn't have something they needed and not getting at least the minimum.
And now I'm meandering. Stopping.