DakotaT -- I think you're missing one of the main points that Porforis and porky88 have both made, namely that even if you tax the rich at 100% you'd have nowhere enough money to deal with the debt problems.
IMO, the real problem is the regulatory morass that disincentives (is that a word?) innovation and entrepreneurship by rich, middle, and poor. (It also explains a big part of why health care is as expensive as it is -- when providers and their employees need expertise in "coding bills" as much as they need competency in medical, you know you've got far too many administrative costs mucking things up.
And it shows in the very issue that started this thread, too, namely immigration "reform" debates. The cost of administering employment to ensure all the rules are met, together with the costs of administering the various social services, means that we increase the incentive to come to this country for the wrong reasons (i.e. suck at the government teat) and decrease the incentive to provide work to those more highly productive domestic workers.
The more cradle-to-grave public support you provide, the more people will be attracted to it; the more people who are attracted to it, the less likely that those administering it are going to catch cheats. The less likely that those administering it are going to catch cheats, the more you are going to attract illegals who are cheats than illegals who just want a better work opportunity.
At the same time, the more you insist on employers complying with 21 different sets of safety and consumer protection and labor and competition and diversity and anti-discrimination and health insurance and animal rights and shipping and blahblahblah etc etc etc rules, the more attractive it becomes to trade American workers and legal immigrants for those illegals that aren't going to tell on you for failing to comply with this or that alphabet-soup rule. (The 21 is actually not a made up number -- I had a student doing a senior thesis a couple years ago on a small hospital in the process of changing its information system. Among the information she dug up -- and mind you, this is an undergraduate, not a lawyer who could probably double the number -- was the fact that said system had to account for 21 sets of regulations. That's not 21 regulations, that's 21
sets of regulations by 21 different government agencies. (As everyone here knows, I'm a big worrier about the omnipresence of the state. As such I shouldn't have been surprised. But her findings shocked even me.)
Another example, this one explicitly tied to immigration. As a college professor in business in economics, I see a lot of international students. Most of them want to stay in the United States after graduation, even those who come from the fast growing Asian economies like China, Vietnam, and India. It's not surprising, since even now, after a couple decades of explosive growth, per capita GDP in those countries is still between 1/15th and 1/5th of that in the United States. Those who stay are going to make a lot more here than they'd ever get back home.
So what do we as a country do? We make it as hard as possible for them to stay. Part of this is the lingering fears from 9/11. A bigger part is simply ignorance (and a bit of nativism) on the well-meaning souls who believe American employers ought to do X, Y, and Z. If we want to compete and grow economically, we ought to be welcoming these people with open arms. We ought to be encouraging employers to hire them. But student after student finds employer after employer finding ways to legally say "U.S. students only". And they do so even though they know that the international students are going to have more of the valuable skills than the American applicants they have to settle for. They do it not because they are racist, but because they see the administrative and political costs of "sponsoring immigrants" even bigger than the productivity gap they are losing.
There's not a regulation on the books that didn't start as "a really good idea", that doesn't have well-meaning people who see it as a way to a better and more humane and more just society. Every rule on the books and all of the 100,000 new pages of them that will be added by the end of this calendar year have advocates who are trying to do good by their fellow Americans. That's the good side. That's why we're all addicted to regulatory and "policy" solutions to all our problems.
Unfortunately, every one of those well-meaning rules has had and will continue to have unintended consequences. As long as we allow doctors to refuse to practice rather than comply with those 21 sets of rules, as long as we allow businessmen to say "no, I'm not going to open a new factory today" rather than incur administrative costs that make such a factory a losing proposition, our desire to regulate and protect is also going to chill and prevent economic benefits from coming. And the more of the rules we bring forth, the more that will opt out. And the more people that opt out, the less we as a society will be able to increase the size of the pie that we hope to share.
IMO the fact that we need to be justifying amnesty for children shows how far we have declined as a nation. Not only are we willing to discriminate against adults by virtue of their place of birth, some of which must be a necessary evil in providing for our "national defense", we state ourselves willing to discriminate against children who are here only because of their parents' choices. I should not assume that the brat next door is a juvenile delinquent until he proves himself otherwise, and that should not change just because he appears to be a Latino child. Argh.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)