Another potential problem is that high-income people who pay the taxes invest more of their income than the low income recipients who receive benefits from those taxes. Higher taxes mean that there will be less investment in plants and equipment and less employment because there are fewer plants and less equipment that requires workers to operate.

But perhaps the greatest potential danger is the impact on incentives. Suppose entrepreneurs who might start businesses, develop better products and services or develop more efficient ways of producing goods and services choose not to start those businesses because the higher taxes reduce the payoffs to the effort. The overall economy becomes stagnant and less productive. Standards of living fall.

An extreme example of this is Zimbabwe today. Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of Africa. It produced far more than it consumed and had a thriving export industry. Robert Mugabe confiscated the productive farms from the mostly white farmers and gave them to government cronies to run. The productivity of the farms collapsed. Thousands of black farm workers lost their jobs. The remaining businesses are suffocated by government officials demanding "inspection fees," "licensing fees" and a host of other taxes.

A huge portion of the population works for the government, but there are so few goods available, refugees are fleeing the country to avoid starvation.

I am not arguing that taxes should not be raised. I am, however, emphasizing that there is a cost that must be considered. Too often, all of the rhetoric is only about the benefit of the government program. The benefits of the government program must be weighed against the economic cost of the tax. Don't kill the geese (entrepreneurial efforts) that lay the golden eggs (the income that pays the tax).

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Hal Heaton is affiliated with the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. He can be reached via e-mail at cfe@byu.edu.