I am planning to share this talk with everyone I know. Collins skillfully presents his ideas with humor and reason--such a gentle man. I love the fact that he makes his case in such a human way, through stories, rather than through facts, figures, graphs, and charts. Collins' presentation style reminds me that though these statistics are necessary tools, nothing is as powerful as a story about human experience.

Good summation of many of the best arguments.

Bad that this is needed at all.

Capitalism REQUIRES heavier taxation of the wealthiest in order to ensure the greatest benefit to people and society as a whole. Capitalism won't do it on its own. Society needs to do it. Other wise Capitalism will break that society apart.

In the same way that a woodstove or fireplace requires a flame-proof hearth. And that I, not the fireplace itself, must build this hearth.

Otherwise the fireplace will burn my house down.

Imagine the carnage (greater than today's) if the logic of Friedmanite economics was applied to traffic regulation and highway rules!

All good points. But not all small businesses are the same, i.e. a person who owns a small business, say in the healthcare field---- unless that person is in the office, working they are not producing any income. That one person is wholly responsible for everything, she is the risk taker, she is the owner, she is the "machine" so to speak that produces the product. That person employs numerous workers, provides for them in every way....but at the end of the day, they go home with no worries and the owner is left with all the responsibility, all the various taxes incurred and paying the highest income tax rate.

While she makes a good income, it is not millions a year, yet this person knows she is responsible for putting her children through college. She must save the hundred thousand for each child, no free hand-outs for her, she lives within her means, she isn't in debt, she's done everything right financially. So now, she dies.......she wanted to provide for her family after death but government estate tax is so high that not of her hard earned money is left for her kids.
She hadn't doled it out before hand. She would've felt okay if that money actually did go toward education,libraries, infra-structure, universities, training centers but sooooo much of her money that she worked all her life for, played by the rules, payed taxes, lived within her means....so much of all that money goes to defense, to war, to the hundreds of military bases where inefficiency is rampant, to weaponizing other foreign countries enabling violence and breaking international law. And now the government bails out the banks, handing over millions of US taxpayer dollars with no conditions.

The estate tax should have some regulatory caps, differentiating between the amounts of money--millions vs billions. If people ran their businesses like the government, we'd all be in deep trouble.
So while I agree with everything Mr. Collins says.......there has to be some mechanism in place that keeps the government in check, so when the slices of budget pie become too big -----a huge alarm sounds telling government that Main Street is drowning, that innovation is disappearing, that the environment needs tending to.

There has to be something more than a thriving MIC to pass on to the next generation, Mr. Collins.

Collins' talk was accurate, important and interesting, although I would suggest that he missed at least one critical point: "Charlie from Hillsborough" will not pay any taxes on anything after he is dead. No one pays taxes after they are dead. The people he wills assets to may have to pay some taxes. After all, that is not only income for them, but income they did not have to work for, and the argument that taxes were already paid on that income is equally bogus. Just because I paid taxes on the income I may have used to pay my lawyer does not mean that he should not have to pay taxes on it because I already did.

In fact, the most important arguments to be made about increasing federal income ought not to be made about "new taxes" but about eliminating the loopholes high income or wealthy people use to avoid paying THEIR SHARE. For example, with all the talk about cutting Social Security and Medicare, no mention is EVER made about the act that UNEARNED INCOME (income from PROFITS, rents, interest, etc.) are already WHOLLY EXEMPT from both those taxes. Closing that loophole, plus the $106,800 cap on taxable Social Security income would provide sufficient additional revenue to FULLY FUND a single payer national health care system for all Americans with NO NEW TAXES (and could probably fund dental care as well)! As a huge bonus, so doing would be of tremendous benefit to cities, counties, states and businesses handicapped by excessively high health care costs. Solutions to these problems are readily found, if only we did not have a government almost wholly corrupted and bought out.

"...if only we did not have a government almost wholly corrupted and bought out."

It is not only that we have a government which is corrupt, but the very substance of society today is filled with psychopaths of varying degree. It is this mental sickness of personal superiority to the extermination of all others that is so damaging. Read Snakes in Suites. There is an accumulation of these people in all of the control centers within our society. The Media is controlling us, the banksters are controlling us, the sham Congress is controlled by them, the courts are controlled by them, and worst: the schools are controlled by them. It will take a cultural revolution to remove these people from power. A cultural revolution may come peacefully, but it think that it will be unlikely, as psychopaths will destroy before they will relinquish power. The OWS movement is that revolution, and it has my full support, however it proceeds.

No matter how much you raise taxes you will not solve any problems. Until you end the current monetary system, where the only way money is created is through interest bearing debt, you will change nothing.

You will end up taxing hard working people who don't have the know how, or the time, to hide their money.

Please, my liberal friends, start thinking outside of the box and your message will appeal to the wider public. Lets end the Federal Reserve and try to figure out a new way to create and circulate money that helps generate prosperity for those who want to make the world a better and more productive place.

"Members of the 1% for the 99%?"

I don't think so.

More like "members of the 1% now realizing that if they do not give a little, they could lose it all."

Taxing the wealthy is just the beginning of reform.
The private banking system, including and especially the Federal Reserve needs to rethought, redrawn, severely regulated and/or nationalized. The whole structure is designed to transfer wealth from workers to the elite. Through deregulation, it has been allowed to consume everything it has come in contact with and is now consuming itself.
Treating banking like a pubilc utility and reclaiming our sovereign right to create our own currency would solve a lot of problems, including the toxic effect of money on representatve government.

Tax the rich, nice thought, but Grover Norquist will never allow it.

/ solution in capitalism can't even be mentioned by both, left and right
/ you already know democrats and republicans are united in congress
/ you don't know how left and right are together in avoidance of basic political and economic issues
/ the existence of taxes scam, the government borrowing money from private sector, the silence about electronic democracy in electronic age are just the few exemplary issues pointing at the force keeping people out of the picture

The billionaires who ask to pay more taxes - have they said at what rate?
Every year from 1936 to 1981 (46 years), the top income bracket in the US was taxed at 70% or more. During 15 of those prosperous years, that rate was over 90%. Since 1987, while income inequality exploded, the top rate plunged to under 40%; it is only 35% now. Will these socially minded citizens support a rate of 90% on income over, say, a million dollars? Would they accept even 70%?

Thomas Paine, the visionary instigator of the American Revolution against the control of trade and taxes by the Crown, the Aristocracy and the Corporations (Dutch East India Company - Boston Tea Party), wrote a final pamphlet titled "Agrarian Justice".

In it, he proposed an estate tax on accumulated property wealth which would be used to fund a social security program that would pay a one-time dividend to all 21-year-olds and an annual dividend for the elderly, the lame and the blind.

The justification for this was that all wealth comes from the exclusive use of the commons - the land and its resources - and that, since we all share in the natural right to the commons, those who appropriate its use have an obligation to compensate all those who have lost its benefits.

This is much the same as my old friend, Chuck Collin's, argument. No one creates wealth in a vacuum. All wealth is due to society's institutions and infrastructure. Hence all the wealthy owe a debt to those who helped create and sustain that social nexus.

If we were to take the issue one step further (as Tom Paine did), no wages would be taxed since those are the fair returns for one's labor; but all unearned income - interest, dividends, profits, capital gains and estates - would be justly taxable because they are "earned" by society at large. If we taxed only the exclusive use of the commons to create wealth, then we could eliminate the income tax and, instead, distribute a commonwealth dividend equally to all. Then we would need fewer "jobs" and leave more time for the real work of serving family, community and society.

Mr. Collins,

Frame the debate around the indisputable title of a "Voluntary Patriot Tax"

The ERROR being made (ONCE AGAIN) is the idea that there is NO alternative solution, outside of Party ideology which offers The*People a choice & Direct*Power in making that choice. Enactment of a Voluntary Patriot Tax offering a fixed 10 year rate allows individual tax reform choice, increasing government revenue, developing the certainty required for corporate & investor markets to confidently prosper. Creating the stability of long term capitalization needed for global economic recovery...