Go back to page 3 of this thread and look at my post with the YouTube video of the Democratic debate in Pennsylvannia. Skip to about 3:40 in the video and you will see Obama being asked whether or not he would raise the capital gains tax, even though history has shown that the government loses money when the tax is raised, and gains money when the tax is lowered. He responds by casting doubt on what will happen in the future (history repeats itself) by saying that what happened in the past might not happen in the future. He then goes on to say that the tax has to be raised "for the purpose of fairness." If you've heard his line about Warren Buffet's secretary paying higher taxes than him than you know what I'm talking about. The reason why this would ruin the economy is a simple tax problem in economic. For the government to lose money by instituting a higher tax, the economy has to shrink. For the government to gain money by decreasing tax rates, the economy has to grow. This is a relatively new theory in economics but is rapidly gaining support among economists. Of course, it only works to a point. Eventually you would have no taxes but that does not mean the government would get an infinite amount of money. It's a counter-intuitive concept but it makes sense if you think about it and it has been proven in the real world.

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"It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary"

-- Ludwig von Mises