Riviera de la Mancha
Michael Noire
Innovation - Exploration of new Frontiers, R&D, Scholarships, Science Fairs, and Universities
Infrastructure - Bridges, Canals, Hospitals, Roads, and Schools
Inspiration - Art, Activities, Cultural Events, History, Music, Museums, and Parks
These are the core responsibilities of the Rich. The Idea that the responsibility of the Rich is to pay higher taxes is an ethical fallacy, for it assumes the greatest good can be achieved by obligating the wealthy to pay into a system where their contributions are routed and redistributed largely to the collectors and through a system of political nepotism. This system makes sure the best possible solutions are never achieved, and the largest fraction of revenues are abused, rather than used.
A rich man doesn't get to determine if his tax dollars go to a space program or to blowing up children in some poverty stricken middle eastern territory. A rich man doesn't get to determine if his tax dollars are spent on the cure for his wife's cancer, or on a monstrous fund raiser and banquette with no actual dollars going to cancer research itself. Tax dollars are highly inefficient, and seldom beneficent.
The wealthy do have a moral obligation to better the world they live in, but that should not be construed as a responsibility to pay even more taxes that do little to improve our quality of life.
First, you need to justify this notion that the rich have responsibilities by virtue of being rich.
Next, and this is probably the biggest contention- if you think it is a 'ethical fallacy' to believe that the greatest good might be achieved by empowering a body created expressly to do so, then I would think you need to articulate why it is any less 'ethically fallacious' to argue that the wealthy have some natural inclination to finance anything you noted, or why the wealthy have a separate set of obligations by sheer virtue of their money when it comes to providing for communal benefits.
After all, the points you allege about a rich person not being able to decide where his money goes is the same of the middle class and poor who pay taxes.
The location the tax dollars of a poor or middle class person goes is almost irrelevant, because they do not pay a sufficient amount of taxes to enact change. For example, even the wealthiest of the middle class cannot afford to build a hospital, space program, cancer research facility, university, or even an elementary school. They cannot make more than a minor contribution to the economy, to a library, or to a public stadium, park, or international conflict. The Rich are not constrained by this level of powerlessness. They can make lasting changes, such as paving hundreds or thousands of miles of highways, building Universities and leaving Endowments to keep them operational, or funding research into private space exploration. The vast majority of scientists, astronomers, and mathematicians during the early years were wealthy "natural philosophers". Those that were not were funded by those that were.
Ethical boundaries exist in different cultures for the wealthy, however, barring nihilism, the core ethic of the wealthy is to generate the currency of status. Status cannot be earned by wealth alone, but how wealth is spent. Admiration of financial and political rivals is the real treasure in the storehouse of the aristocrat. Hundreds of thousands of history books will tell you precisely the same thing. The opinions of others is what really matters when you are rich, and one of the ways to improve the opinions of others is to succeed in your goals, and to rule by love/likableness/respect, rather than by fear. Citizens, slaves, and the lesser titled function more efficiently when operating out of admiration rather than out of fear. The Son of Khan discovered this all too late when the Chinese ship builders under his rule sabotaged his ships and they were dashed asunder by a typhoon.
