I'm with Linca on that discussion. The upper middle class isn't the problem, it's the tiny number of people at the top. If you look at where income gains have gone over the past couple decades, it's the tiny number at the top. What I'd want is a return to Clinton era tax rates for most people, plus (indexed) capital gains counting as straight income, plus ending the cap on SS, plus a new tax bracket for folks earning over $1million/year of sixty-seventy percent, federal. Europeans, who don't have local/state income taxes should have the national tax at a correspondingly higher level.