By the time the government gets done with high wage earners those people are paying >50% of their income to taxes and fees.
I would like to see your math on this.
Seriously? Between a mid to high 30s federal income tax, medicare tax, ss tax, state tax, property tax, personal property tax, gas tax, sales tax, etc you can't see how its possible?
Star- plus double SS payments for the self employed.
If you're paying anywhere near 50% at any income level, then you need to fire your accountant immediately, because they are a fucking idiot.
If you have the money, there's really no end to the creative, yet legal ways that you can avoid paying taxes. As a decent earning self-employed person with an S Corp, I know. It's just silly, and I don't even take advantage of it all either.
And as a reminder, even if you're in the top income tax bracket, that doesn't mean that you pay 39.6% or whatever it is now on everything you earn. You only pay that on the part that exceeds the top bracket, which, off the top of my head, is whatever exceeds around $400k-ish now. But, that's just salary. Chances are, a good chunk of your income comes from dividends, which are pretty sweet as they completely bypass FICA taxes altogether, even at the higher rate.
If you're self employed (or at least have an S-Corp) you can also stuff a substantial amount of cash into retirement accounts through a profit sharing 401k, cramming over $50k tax free into that. Note that's a lot more than your lower earning working stiffs can put away. Poor bastards.
Then there are business deductions out the ass. You can also do fun things with trusts. And if you have a "farm" (that nice 200 year old colonial you summer in that has a few acres of [cough] "farm land" attached to it, then sweet Jeezus it can get good, not to mention that you can qualify for farm subsidies then. Then there's all the itemized deductions and charitable giving deductions and other bullshit you can cram in as well.
And this is just the small potatoes, 1%-er but not even .001%-er stuff off the top of my head that I know about. A good accountant and tax lawyer can probably work some really sick magic.