As far as your last paragraph, I don't think anyone has been under the impression that the wealthy pay a lot of taxes in comparison to their wealth. We don't tax wealth. If you define "richest" by income, the richest Americans by far pay the most. Half the country pays effectively no federal income tax, and taxpayers with AGI above $200K (roughly 6% of the country) pay 70% more in aggregate taxes than the the bottom 94% combined.

I'm all for figuring out how to tax the super wealthy, but I assure you that raising capital gains tax rates on everyone else is not the way. If the super wealthy can avoid paying taxes when the top cap gains rate is 23.8%, does anyone think they're going to actually pay more when the top rate nearly doubles to 43.4%? We need to stop going after high earners with higher rates and pretending we're taxing the wealthy. If you want to fix THIS problem, then implement period forced mark to market or implement a wealth tax. But higher capital gains or income tax rates do nothing for the super wealthy that can easily avoid both.