Which of these groups should sacrifice the most?

[anvi]

In ideal circumstances that will eventually bring us around to solvency, everyone will have to pay a little more as well as give up some otherwise wanted or expected benefits.  That's one basic reason why a comprehensive budget deal is such a hard sell, because it does indeed just look like "sacrifice."  "Sacrifice" requires more benevolence from people than they can normally muster.  Most of the time, when it comes to issues like taxes and benefits, even "sacrifice" can only be prompted by appealing to self-interest.   If people of any group can be convinced, somehow, that short-term sacrifice has a chance of leading to long-term gain, they're more likely to do it.  If the upper-classes thought that "sacrificing" to improve the lot of the broad-range of consumers would eventually increase their own bottom line, they'd be more likely to do it.  If middle-class taxpayers could be convinced that paying more would enhance the benefits available to them in the future, they'd be more likely to do it too.  But if people are told that they're just giving away more for the benefit of others with little hope of getting anything out of it themselves, whether they're wealthy or not, they'll naturally resist.  If Bill Clinton were selling "shared sacrifice," he wouldn't call it that, nor would he call it a case of "fairness" as Obama often does.  He'd call it "shared investment."  But when you're in a situation where you have to give more and get back less, then even calling it "investment" is a damned hard sell. 

[anvi]

The idea here is that if there was agreement from a certain group(capital), the measure doesn't go far enough.

The thing is that, while I certainly agree that the top fifth and large corporations have to put in more in rightly designed ways, the vote totals above (I haven't voted yet) show that nobody thinks that the middle three-fifths of income earners or retirees should sacrifice "the most," and there are very few votes for "defense contractors" too.  But if you look at the biggest expenditure classifications of the federal budget, these three groups are the recipients of considerably large portions of current benefits.  It seems to me that if these groups want the benefits to continue at even comparable levels in the future, they have to be willing to put more in, and should see putting more in as an "investment" and not an outright "sacrifice."  We can't continue comparable benefit levels infinitely into the future in the face of ever-rising costs if we continue to borrow two dollars of every three that we spend.