Millionaire’s tax is on target is other one of the two stories that MichaelK really wanted me to look at. (Instead I jumped on The Occupied Wall Street Journal.)

The story starts off well:

Here’s one idea that could unite Main Street voters with Occupy Wall Street protesters — raise taxes only on individuals making more than $1 million a year and use that revenue to pay for President Barack Obama’s jobs bill, which is made up of bipartisan policy proposals to get the economy moving again.

It is an audacious idea, brewed first by Sen. Charles Schumer and backed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as preferable to the president’s repeated call to roll back the Bush tax cuts on any household making more than $250,000 a year.

There are several reasons that this new millionaire’s tax is both smart politics and smart policy.

First, an astounding 75% of Americans back raising taxes on individuals making more than $1 million a year, according to an October 5 Washington Post/ABC News poll. This includes 89% of Democrats, 75% of independents, 57% of Republicans and 55% of Tea Party supporters. This isn’t subtle — it’s a slam-dunk.

In my opinion it really veers off with:

The best option of all in my book would not be a targeted surcharge but broad-based tax reform that could actually lower all rates to spur growth while closing some (but not all) loopholes to raise revenues. This is the broad goal set out by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission, a vision championed by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and even once campaigned on by a candidate named Barack Obama.

Whoa! Whoa! and Whoa!.  This is the kind of proposal where the devil really is in the details.  First of all it implies a buy-in to the idea that we need to lower taxes to spur growth.  It is actually the balance between tax collections and government spending, and the exact nature of that spending that probably has more to do with growth than just the level of taxation.

Secondly, without knowing the details, we don’t know who really gets to pay more and who gets to pay less.  If the plan shifts more of the tax burden onto the middle class and off the super wealthy, then I would definitely be against it.  If the plan shifted the tax burden more fairly to the people who have lots of money but don’t invest it in our economy, then I would say yes.

I just get the nervous feeling whenever I hear “Lower the tax rates and close loopholes” that this is code for lessening the taxes that the ultra-wealthy and corporations pay.  The proponents of such an action would have to go a long way to convince me that my fears are not warranted.