New taxes for some (including me)

Progressive taxation has a long history: As Jefferson said in a 1785 letter to James Madison, "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
But the conservatives — who since the days when John Adams called working people "the rabble" and Alexander Hamilton suggested they should play no (or only a token) role in government — fought back. A true middle class represented a threat to the aristocrats and pseudo-aristocrats of America's conservatives. They may have to give up some of their power, and some of the higher end of their wealth may even be "redistributed" – horror of horrors – for schools, parks, libraries, and other things that support a healthy middle-class society but are not needed by the rich who live in a parallel, but separate, world among us.