So do "the rich" pay their fair share?

President Obama made it very clear in his campaign speech last night that he thinks that "the rich" are getting off easy in our economy. He even said that they can afford to, "pay a little more."

So how much exactly are they paying right now? It just so happens that the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) has the breakdown of who pays what when comes to our income taxes:

• The top 1 percent of taxpayers pay 38 percent of all the income taxes despite having just 20 percent of the income.
• The top 10 percent of taxpayers pay 70 percent of the income tax while having just 46 percent of the income.
• At the other end, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers pay just 2.7 percent of the income tax while having 13 percent of the income.

So percentage-wise, the people who are getting off the easiest are the people who Obama calls "the less fortunate."

My question is - and people like Obama never seem to have the answer - how much is enough? Exactly how much should we tax the rich? It is always described as, in the words of Obama, "a little more." How much more?

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson