The middle class powers our economy, not rich people. If all the wealthy left, and all of the poor people moved up into the middle class, this country would be enormously better.
There are more of us in the middle class, but how would the expenses of the government be paid and how would the poor move up? The wealthy pay more in taxes and spend more than the rest, combined. I have a customer who paid $85,000 in estimated income tax EVERY QUARTER about 5 years ago. How many middle class families would it take to spend $3M on housing and then, furnish, remodel & decorate them?
In 2017, the US had almost 83 million households (a closer number is in the link) and 7.7% of those made over $200K/year. If you want to start at a lower number to define 'wealthy, let's use ~$150K- that was another 7% and that comes to more than 12 million households who are in the two top tax brackets.
Let's use $50M taxable income as an example-
They made $50M, the base tax for the top rate of $418,401 is $121,505.25 and then, they paid 39.6% on anything over $418,400 ($49,581,600), which is $19,634,313.60, for a grand total of $19,755,818.85.
That's one person- how many people making $50K does it take to equal that tax revenue if the rate is $5,226.25 plus 25% of the amount over $37,950? They'll pay $17,276.25 and it would require 1136 households to pay an equal amount. Obviously, the deductions and exemptions offset part of the tax, but remember, not everyone inherited their wealth, so they paid for their possessions and whatever allows them to write off some of their income. Even if someone can write off all of it, they still spend a lot of money.
2017 tax brackets-
https://www.irs.com/articles/2017-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptions-and-standard-deductions
US households-
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/
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