Please explain how you have a 'right' to something that belongs to someone else by right.
Look, what makes you think that just because you earn an income, regardless of how or how much, you "deserve" it all net-after-taxes? Because a flat-rate taxation is warped and unfair?
You perhaps never had a Civics Class that taught key-aspects of a market-economy, so permit me to explain that:
*You are
participating in a market-economy along with (about) 156 million other workers.
*That market-economy has rules and regulations that are observed by all three main participants - that is Employers, Workers and Consumers. Most often, the number of Consumers is about equal to that of Employers and Workers. But, economically, the similarity stops there.
*We all have rights, some by means of laws, others are self-evident.
*Presently the law defining the Minimum Wage state-by-state in our country is a joke at about $15K per year, that is,
60% of the Poverty-Threshold value of $23K per year for a family of 4. Millions of families live below that level.
*That notion of unfairness does not sink-in to dense skulls of many members of the population, who have no sense whatsoever of
community beyond their town or state. (Unless there is a personal tragedy - like a fire, a mass-murder, a flood, etc., etc., etc.)
*A national tragedy at the level of 50 million-people below the Poverty-Threshold eking out a miserable-existence is beyond your conception/understanding? Like many, perhaps you toss them aside as "deadbeats"?
*The top-end, or "super-rich", at .01 percent of the population, have an annual income of $9.5 million or more, which is about 5% of the total income of the United States in 2012.
*These 15,000 families do not "
work"; because
their financial assets produce Wealth. They have been characterized as the "richest of the rich" - and their income (taxed at barely 30%) gushes up to Wealth and Net Worth. Where only 11% of American families possess 88% of the nation's Net Worth* (= Wealth - Debt).
*That is the top-end of the scale, constituted of about only 60,000 people who are considered the "super-rich" because they need not work.
*The "simply-rich" are those who work-to-earn 1 million or more a year, and they are about 5% of all households (which is about 116 million families).
All this creation of riches happens, not because the rich and super-rich "work hard for it", but because unfair flat-taxation permits it (which was established by Reckless Ronnie in the 1980s).
Put upper-income taxation back to 90% as it was before LBJ stoopidly started tinkering with it for his Texan Friends in the 1960s; along with a system of Progressive Taxation, and the super-rich will remain at its present level.
Will that be a Great Crime Against Humanity? Nope, not at all. The super-rich will live comfortably on the Wealth they have already unfairly gained, and the New Order of Taxation will apply only to the super-rich wannabees.
So, the question remains, "If taxes are increased, what do we do with the money?" To which the partial answer is, "No, we don't buy a dozen flocks of Lockheed F-35s!"
We spend that money on:
*A National Health-Insurance System for the entire nation funded/managed by the Federal Government, and
*Subsidizing free-tuition at state-administered institutions of Post-secondary Education (vocational, 2- & 4-year).
And in that manner, we prepare the nation to overcome one of the worst Economic Dislocations that is occurring now, today, presently. That is, the passage from the Industrial to the Information Age,
which will alter forever the way our market-economy generates income for 318 million Americans ...
*See Prof. Domhoff (U of Cal) pie-charts
here.
