Again and again it's been tried, even here in this country, and it's failed EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Yet the Progressives are incapable of realizing a very simple and easily proven truth, that being you cannot enrich the poor by impoverishing the rich. Yet again and again they insist that in order to be “fair” they need to spread the wealth. Unfortunately they will quickly do away with what wealth there is (except theirs, of course) and make sure everyone is poor. As if that were somehow fair.
The argument they use is that the wealthy can afford confiscatory taxes. But for every means the Progressives come up with stealing what isn't theirs through taxation, the wealth producers find ways around them. And as the tax rates climb, they collect less revenue from the wealthy. Should it become bad enough, the wealthy will leave, taking their wealth with them. That's a lesson the UK learned during the 1970's, when their 'wealth' taxes caused a mass migration of wealth to more tax-friendly locations, with the end result being the collapse of the British economy.
Could the same thing happen here? Absolutely. We've already seen some elements of that occurring, with US corporations moving their 'headquarters' to tax-friendly nations like Bermuda, allowing them to greatly reduce the amount of corporate taxes they pay. Why? Because the US has some of the highest corporate taxes in the world. Only a sucker or an idiot wouldn't make moves to lessen their tax burdens if at all possible.
Now that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, and Dodd have decided the rich are the problem, they've been wasting no time trying to figure out even more ways of extracting money they did nothing to earn to give to their 'core' constituents, meaning not the average working man or woman. One commenter to the piece linked above has some of it figured out.
The Progressive mindset does not allow them to think anything other than wealth is a 'zero sum' game. That means they believe that if someone became wealthy it was because they stole it from someone else and made them poor. It appears it is hard for many of them to believe the wealthy became that way through hard work, long hours, and taking risks others were not willing to take. That many Progressives in government have managed to become wealthy through their government connections and not through the traditional American system of hard work again leads far too many of them to think their way is the only true way to become wealthy. It is true in a kleptocracy, something it seems a lot of Progressives are working very hard to create. One thing they have overlooked though is that most kleptocracies are Third World nations, with a vast majority of their populace living in poverty because that's exactly the way the kleptocrats in power want it. The Progressives in this nation are no different, though they'll try to pretty up their attempts in mind-numbing governmentalese and politically correct speech, trying to make it seem as if it's a good idea.
[They] are not really interested in raising revenue - but to continue punishing those that have money - ... It is as simple as that.
They are so envious of those that can create wealth, that the only thing Obama and his ilk can do is grab onto as much as they can, spread the misery and distribute anything they can grab - The fact that they may have less to distribute is also irrelevant - As long as those that have money feel the sting, Obama is happy - and when those that have money do whatever it takes to try and escape the taxman, the misery creators, Obama will keep turning the screws ...
In the end, though, it all comes down to envy. Democrats, and particularly the Progressives within the party, envy the successful. It's all they have that might reach others of the same bent of mind. They'll work hard to take away what the successful have made, but won't work that hard to make themselves successful. They are, as Ayn Rand described them, looters.
But all of that aside (I do go off on tangents, don't I?), what Laffer describes, what most Americans understand, and what the nation needs can be broken down into two simple sentences, provided by yet another savvy commenter:
Indeed!
Who cares if tax breaks don't fill the pockets of lower wage earners (like myself)? If raising taxes doesn't help the economy, then don't do it. (Emphasis added)