UNR Professor Says Higher Taxes For The Rich Doesn't Add Up

From the RGH: “Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare,” President Barack Obama said. “This is not class warfare; it’s math.”
Let’s look at the math.
In 2009, the most recent year for which federal income tax data is available, an adjusted gross income (AGI) of at least $343,947 was required to make the top 1 percent. These wealthy people earned $1.325 trillion, or 17 percent of the country’s total AGI. After all deductions and tax credits, they paid $318 billion in income taxes, or an average of 25 percent of their AGI. This represented 37 percent of the total federal income taxes collected.
The lower 99 percent of income earners paid the remaining 63 percent tax share, or $548 billion. Having earned $6.501 trillion, this implies an average tax rate of 12 percent. An AGI below $32,396 put one in the lower 50 percent of tax return filers. The bottom 50 percent paid an average income tax rate of 1.85 percent and 2.25 percent of the total income taxes collected. Of the 138 million people filing tax returns with positive AGI, 41 percent paid no income tax, after all deductions and tax credits were applied.
Given these numbers, it takes creativity to argue the tax code is biased in favor of the wealthy and that increasing the income tax rate on the wealthy will make a meaningful dent in the $1.1 trillion federal budget deficit that is forecast for 2012. In fact, the federal government would roughly have to tax away all the income of the top 1 percent to eliminate the current deficit.
Also consider that the wealthy can afford to work less if they are taxed more. Thus, it is questionable as to whether an increase in the tax rate on the wealthy would increase tax receipts at all. When income tax rates were cut at all income levels in 2001, taxes receipts decreased from all but those at the highest income levels. The top 1 percent paid $367 billion under a 27 percent average tax rate in 2000, but they paid $368 billion under a 23 percent average tax rate in 2005. In contrast, the bottom 95 percent paid $427 billion under a 10 percent average tax rate in 2000 but paid $377 billion under an 8 percent average tax rate in 2005.
http://www.rgj.com/article/20120229/COL0815/302290046/Mark-Pingle-UNR-Math-does-not-justify-increasing-income-tax-rate-wealthy?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
Obama just wants to play the class warfare game.  His policies have failed, Obama is not smart enough to come up any successsful programs, so all he has is class warfare to play with.
Another reason why he will be a 1 term president