To properly fund infrastructure investments, tax credits, training and education, and seriously tackle the federal budget deficit, we will need the top 20 percent of Americans to pay more in taxes.

Sound harsh? Politicians seem to feel so: Even Democrats promise their “middle class” constituents making $250,000 or more that they need not worry about higher taxes. And yet they — let’s be honest, we, given that the average for the top 20 percent of households with more than $200,000 in yearly income — can afford it.

I call this the “Me? I’m Not Rich!” problem. The more money people get, the more they think they would need to get in order to quality as “rich.” That is why “tax the rich” rhetoric from the left (and occasionally the right) currently fails; nobody thinks the increases should include them.

In the U.S. currently, the median household income is slightly less than $60,000 a year. Almost half (46 percent) of those making more than $100,000 a year think you need at least $500,000 a year to count as “rich,” compared with 18 percent of those bringing in less than $30,000 a year. Indeed, many people who themselves are, by any reasonable definition, rich, see themselves as ordinary middle-class folk, as demonstrated by the interviews conducted by Rachel Sherman for her new book, "Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence."

This perception forces progressives to focus their attention on an ever-narrower slice at the very top of the distribution: not just the top 1 percent, but the top 0.1 percent or 0.001 percent.

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Tax reform, then, is like a low-fat diet: a great idea … for someone else, tomorrow. Promises of a simpler, fairer, more efficient tax code generally do little more than keep politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle busy.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, for instance, recently said that if President Trump’s plans were enacted, most people would be able to fill out their taxes on "a large postcard." He has also predicted most wealthy Americans would see some sort of a cut. Meanwhile, fresh from yet another stinging health care defeat, some Republicans feel increased pressure from the White House to produce a successful tax reform plan.