TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Warren Buffet calls for higher taxes for those with over $1 million in income:

But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.

He cites his own effective tax rate from last year—17.4 percent—as an example of how the rich are under taxed and should, as others have phrased it, pay their “fair share.” His argument isn’t simply that the federal government needs higher revenues and the wealthy are a good source for tax revenues; he’s making a moral argument that they are not paying as much as they should.

There’s two immediate problems with this argument. First, Reihan Salam noted last year, the top 1 percent—household incomes over $1.2 million—were responsible for more than 40 percent of federal income tax revenue in 2007. It simply isn’t the case that low and middle income households are bearing the burden of supporting the federal government’s costs.

Second, AEI’s Alan Viard shows that to raise another $1 trillion over a decade by raising taxes on incomes greater than $1 million per year, the highest marginal tax rate—35 percent—would need to rise to 57 percent. The wealthy aren’t some sort of untapped source of revenue that we can just begin utilizing and paper over our long-term fiscal disaster, as some seem to think.

a tax increase on wealthy individuals may be a part of a solution to our deficit, but it isn’t the solution, nor is it a get-out-of-jail-free card for our entitlement programs and discretionary government spending. There are no easy choices for solving our fiscal disaster.