More than half of America seems to think that “rich” people don’t need their money so, hey, let’s just take it from them. If higher taxes on the “rich” becomes the country’s solution to deficit and debt, then what will that tax-the-rich-more policy actually do for us?

But even if taxes on the rich did go directly to deficit reduction, it wouldn’t be enough. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office put the 2012 deficit at $1.1 trillion. It noted that this was the fourth straight year of trillion-plus deficits. This year, the deficit is 7 percent of the gross domestic product. CBO projections don’t show much change in the annual deficit over the next decade. So even if the additional income taxes amounted to the $829 billion figure, the extra revenue would not eliminate the annual deficit, and it would do nothing to pay down the accumulated national debt of $16 trillion.