The 50% Danger

Michael Barone fears that if wealthy people's federal and state taxes reach the magic number of 50%, they'll do what they did when taxes were high in the 1970s -- hide their wealth instead of putting it to work:

[A]t that point, I fear, the animal spirits of high earners are going to be directed away from productive investment and toward tax avoidance and tax shelters. Away from creating new enterprises that can provide avenues upward for any and all, and toward gaming the system for the well-connected and shrewd insiders. Away from an economy that grows more than anyone imagined and toward an economy where system-gamers take shares of a static pie away from the rest of us. Is that where we really want to go?