This wu is about the United States' political culture - so it may or may not apply to where you are.
As elections roll around, ever notice that no political ads ever talk about raising taxes? The last politician to publicly announce that he or she would raise taxes if elected was Bruce Babbitt, and hardly anyone remembers him anymore.
Everyone is assailed by ads and TV sound bites that claim lower taxes help low income and working people. This is patently nonsense - low taxes help rich people more than poorer people.
I have the firm belief that those people that are better off financially have the moral obligation to pay more taxes because whatever the government is doing with the tax money has set up the kind of environment that let them get rich in the first place.
One might argue that poor people use a disproportionate amount of their income on subsistence spending (food, clothing, heat), so that any tax increase would hurt lower income people more. This does not take into account of what government could be doing to help poor people out if they had more tax income. For example: 10 poor families each making $20,000, 1 rich family making $200,000. If taxes were a hypothetical 10%, the poor families would each pay $2,000 and the rich family would pay $20,000 - netting $40,000 that would be spent by the government to the tune of $40,000 divided by 11 families equaling roughly $3,636 - meaning each poor family gets $1,636 more spent on them than they put into taxes. If the taxes were to double to 20%, each poor family would pay $4,000 and rich family pays $40,000, totaling $80,000 allowing government to spend $7,272 per family - the poor families now get $3,272 spent on them more than they put into taxes. The math is such that higher the tax rate, the more it benefits poorer people.
The above only takes income tax into account, but it's very much the same when you think about sales tax, property tax, and capital gains tax. Higher income people spend more and have more property and investments.
Don't let the politicians and slick TV ads fool you - higher taxes benefit poor people, and lower taxes benefit rich people.
I don't agree with the node progressive income taxes are evil. I think it's another one of those things that minimally affects rich people while making things much easier on poor people. Progressive income taxes help poor people, but it doesn't change my argument above. The math gets a bit more involved, that's all.