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Dippin, if total tax burden is consistent across time, irrespective of variations in rates across time, that tells you that overall payment of taxes is resistant to more than marginal attempts to increase them.
And you really serious think that people don't respond to tax incentives? Is that really your position: that taxes can be raised without affecting the behavior of the people who are taxed? If it is, well, wow.............
The problem with your argument in general is the counterfactual: what would the economy have looked like in the 1950s, say, with lower tax rates? What we do know, however, is that when JFK slashed rates the economy boomed. JFK did the first supply side tax cut and it was massively successful. It also raised much more tax money than before. You can look it up.
You also might want to look at the history of tax shelters. I'm not making this stuff up, I've seen it come and go through my career in dealing with clients who are businesses. (i.e. I have real life experience with this stuff, not graphs out of a book that other people put together to grind political axes with).
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