The Wall Street Journal has a sense of humour (who knew?) On Saturday, Scott Adams explained how to tax the rich:

The president was too polite to mention it during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, but here's a quick summary of the problem: The U.S. is broke. The hole is too big to plug with cost cutting or economic growth alone. Rich people have money. No one else does. Rich people have enough clout to block higher taxes on themselves, and they will.

Likely outcome: Your next home will be the box that your laser printer came in. I hope that you kept it. [...]

So what can society do to persuade the rich that they actually want to be more heavily taxed? Adams puts forward a number of innovative ideas to solve this problem - all of them bad ideas as he readily admits:

I spent some time working in the television industry, and I learned a technique that writers use. It's called "the bad version." When you feel that a plot solution exists, but you can't yet imagine it, you describe instead a bad version that has no purpose other than stimulating the other writers to imagine a better version.

For example, if your character is stuck on an island, the bad version of his escape might involve monkeys crafting a helicopter out of palm fronds and coconuts. That story idea is obviously bad, but it might stimulate you to think in terms of other engineering solutions, or other monkey-related solutions. The first step in thinking of an idea that will work is to stop fixating on ideas that won't. The bad version of an idea moves your mind to a new vantage point.

With that technique in mind, I will describe some bad versions of how society might go about the job of convincing the rich to accept higher taxes on themselves. [...]

So, have readers here got any better ideas?

Use an exponential scale - Or a flat tax and a confiscatory inheritance tax. And shoot anyone who resists.

The state doesn't bother with convincing the middle class to pay taxes. It taxes and fine or jail anyone who resists. Why should it be different for the rich?

Their money give them power, true but, like a woman's beauty, it is only a relative power i.e. your "victim" has to be sensible to it. The state control raw, absolute power - violence. To be able to destroy something is to control it absolutely. We do not negotiate with terrorists. We ought not to negotiate with the rich either.

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