If I was a "one percenter", I’d love the debate under way in the U.S. right now. What’s not to love? You whine and cry about the "Buffett Rule", how unfair it is and hurts the "job creators", and, then, laugh all the way to the bank as you barely can see where the "Buffett Rule" hurts your pile of gold. Or, even better, you embrace the "Buffett Rule" and look like a "liberal" and still remain filthy wealthy. It’s a joke.

The president and is Democratic allies are playing right into the game:

With a rousing speech on Tuesday to a receptive university audience of about 5,000 in this battleground state, Mr. Obama defined the coming contest as a clash of philosophies: His argument that tax fairness and the common good demand the richest Americans pay at least as much as middle-income taxpayers do, contrasted with Republicans’ opposition to any tax increases as job killers and class warfare, even at the cost of deep cuts in domestic programs.

While voters have not often rewarded candidates who advocate tax increases, Mr. Obama and his campaign advisers, in league with Democrats in Congress, express confidence that voters are on their side, with polls showing that Americans overwhelmingly agree that wealthy taxpayers should pay more and that they favor spending for programs like education, research and health care.

   So, let’s turn first to the people who don’t adjust their beliefs based on elections and polls–the Citizens for Tax Justice, which essentially says that this is a sham:

The most straightforward way to implement the Buffett Rule would be to eliminate the personal income tax preferences for investment income. This would mean, first, allowing the parts of the Bush tax cuts that expanded those preferences to expire. Second, Congress would repeal the remaining preference for capital gains income, which would raise $533 billion over a decade.[emphasis added]

   And:

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island has introduced a bill that would take a more roundabout approach to implementing the Buffett Rule by imposing a minimum tax equal to 30 percent of income on millionaires. This would raise much less revenue than simply ending the break for capital gains, for several reasons.

First, taxing capital gains as ordinary income would subject capital gains to a top rate of 39.6 percent in years after 2012, while Senator Whitehouse’s minimum tax would have a top rate of just 30 percent. Second, the minimum tax for capital gains income would effectively be even less than 30 percent because it would take into account the 3.8 percent Medicare tax on investment income that was enacted as part of health care reform. Third, while most capital gains income goes to the richest one percent of taxpayers, there is a great deal of capital gains that goes to taxpayers who are among the richest five percent or even one percent but who are not millionaires and therefore not subject to the Whitehouse proposal.

Other reasons for the lower revenue impact of the Whitehouse proposal (compared to repealing the preference for capital gains) have to do with how it is designed. For example, Senator Whitehouse’s minimum tax would be phased in for people with incomes between $1 million and $2 million. Otherwise, a person with adjusted gross income of $999,999 who has effective tax rate of 15 percent could make $2 more and see his effective tax rate shoot up to 30 percent. Tax rules are generally designed to avoid this kind of unreasonable result.

The legislation also accommodates those millionaires who give to charity by applying the minimum tax of 30 percent to adjusted gross income less charitable deductions.

These provisions would not be necessary if Congress took the more straightforward approach of simply ending the tax preferences for investment income, which would simply require that all income be taxed at the same rates.[emphasis added]

  The upshot is that the whole Buffett Rule game is designed to shift attention from the truth: that under any of these proposals, the top one percent still end up paying an ungodly small income tax..

   At the risk of being called unpatriotic, let’s look to the French for comparison in their electoral tax debate, both how the people think and what is being proposed:

A majority of French voters support a proposal from the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate Francois Hollande to impose a 75% tax on the income of people earning more than EUR1 million a year, a poll by Ipsos showed Monday.

About 57% of French voters said they support the tax rate because "it will contribute to more social justice," Ipsos found, while 42% of voters oppose the tax "because it will encourage the richest to leave France."

Last week, Hollande caused an uproar in the ruling UMP party led by his presidential opponent, incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, when he proposed taxpayers earning over EUR1 million a year be subjected to a special 75% tax bracket if he is elected. [emphasis added]

   So, sure, pass the Buffett Rule–but don’t tell us that you are being serious about demanding that the richest pay a fair share. Baloney.