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This post by Stephen Bainbridge quotes approvingly from a WSJ editorial entitled "'Billionaires on the Warpath'?":

In fact, the desire for higher taxes often seems to justify itself solely by the motive to level down. . . . . For all the talk about "fairness," Mr. Obama, Mr. Sanders and their fellow Democrats never really tell us what the magic number for fairness is. Is it 35% of income? 50%? 75%? Though they never commit themselves to an actual number, in each and every case we get the same answer: Taxes should be higher than they are now, for their own sake.

... [T]he politics of higher taxes now rests almost purely on stoking resentment. If Republicans hope to regain the moral high ground, they need to remind citizens that the argument for lower taxes and government that lives within its means is not an argument about numbers or federal revenues. It's an argument about the ability of all our citizens to realize their dreams and opportunities.

Why is anyone who suggests higher taxes on income over $250,000 "stoking class warfare"?  Isn't it a matter of simple economics?

One of the basic principles of economics is diminishing marginal utility.  Marginal utility represents the change in utility from the increase in consumption of a particular good or service.  As you get more and more of a good, your marginal utility with each increment generally decreases.  Eventually, you can have so much that an additional increment adds nothing to your overall utility.  Money is not a good or service, but it represents the ability to obtain goods and services.  And thus one would expect money to have diminishing marginal utility as well.  The more money you have, the less utility you get from each addition dollar.  

So if you're constructing a tax code, it makes sense to keep this in mind.  The lower the income, the higher the utility each dollar represents to that individual.  Since the government is indifferent as to which dollar it takes, it makes sense to take more money that has a lower utility to the taxpayer.  Doesn't $100 mean something different to someone who makes $30,000, as opposed to someone who make $30,000,000?  Isn't that what the parable of the widow's mite is all about?

There are reasons not to have higher taxes on higher income -- they may hurt productivity or investment.  But to claim that their only justification is class warfare ignores some basic economics.

UPDATE: Sarah Lawsky has a paper that challenges the assumption of diminishing marginal utility.  Here's an abstract, which claims: "while some evidence does support declining marginal utility, other evidence suggests that a significant number of people actually experience increasing marginal utility, at least over some range of wealth."  I'm curious about this evidence.  The paper is apparently forthcoming in Minn. L. Rev., but I could not find a copy on the Interwebs.  If anyone has any evidence contra diminishing marginal utility, please chime in.

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