The rich don't have enough money to fix the deficit problem

I just did a little math to illustrate this point. If you look at the top 1% earners in the US. They make on average $1,117,000. Now the population of the US is 311,191,103. I figure maybe only half of those people work, that is probably a super aggressive assumption, in reality its probably much lower. But for the sake of this argument, lets assume (311,191,103/2) * .01 * 1,117,000. This number is $1,738,002,310,255. This is the total income per year by the top 1% earners in the US. Right now they pay a 38% tax rate. If you charged them 100% rate, (cause screw them, those greedy bastards!) the government could take in $1,738,002,310,255 which is $1,077,561,430,000 more revenue.

In 2010 the budget deficit is estimated to be 1.29 trillion. So there is still a 212 billion dollar problem here.

Not even getting into any of the moral issues about how taxing someone 100% is wrong (obviously that revenue would dry up pretty fast as people leave the country), or anything emotional about how the rich should pay more. You can see that the numbers don't add up, and what we have here is fundamentally a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

Now we can get into all sorts of debates about where we should cut spending as I'm sure we will be in the next few months. But can we all just agree that its a spending problem, the facts are pretty obvious.

Interesting read on how California got into trouble by relying on taxing the rich too much,
The Price of Taxing the Rich . In a nutshell they are not a consistent revenue stream, especially during recessions.