Over at PolicyMic Cato senior fellow and Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron discusses how America should tackle its massive debt. Miron argues the Obama-Buffett solution of taxing the rich is little more than political posturing, failing to achieve any real impact on curbing out-of-control spending and massive long-term entitlement liabilities.

President Obama’s solution to America’s deficit woes is to make the rich pay higher taxes. Using Warren Buffet as his prop, the President has repeatedly asserted that we must not balance the budget on the backs of the neediest, but instead make the rich pay their “fair” share. The President’s perspective is misguided at every level.… In contrast to Buffet’s view that the rich pay less in federal taxes than the middle class, the facts show otherwise. According to the Tax Policy Center, the top 1% of the income distribution pays 30.4% of its income in federal taxes while the middle fifth pays 14.1%. That may be less redistribution than Obama and Buffet would like, but it is hardly the perverse pattern that Buffet asserts.

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