[NTHockey]

Fairness means equitable to everyone. Nowhere in all this discussion is mention made of the 47% who pay ZERO income taxes. When everyone pays, then we can start talking about “taxing the rich” and being unfair.

[scbison]

Instead of envy, it is covetenous, which is spelled out directly in the 10 commandments.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Blame Ronald Reagan for the 47%. He believed in lowering the tax burden to everone, nowhere more than for workers with near subsistance incomes. Reagan said in 1984:

"The Census Bureau confirms that, because of the tax laws we inherited, the number of households at or below the poverty level paying Federal income tax more than doubled between 1980 and 1982. Well, they received some relief in 1983, when our across-the-board tax cut was fully in place. And they'll get more help when indexing goes into effect this January."

Republicans complaining about ANYBODY paying too little tax is not a winning move. It certainly wasn't Reagan's way.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

In the story of “The three little pigs” ‘fairness’ to Obama would be forcing the industrious pig, who worked hard and built his house of strong brick, to pay for someone to come and build comparable houses for the other two pigs who sat on their butts and hadn't put the effort in.