I left off a zero
I was really just illustrating a point more than anything. The top 10'ish percent of earned income earners provide the lionshare of horsepower to quite a few industries that support many jobs and livelihoods. I say earned income specifically to exclude to the quasi-aristocratic families like the Kennedy's and Rockefellers that have most of there wealth protected from taxation that impacts most high W2 earners.
I used the yacht culture as one example. Often times these expenditures seems silly to most people, but there are positive side-effects of this type of consumption. A large public Software Co. CEO acquaintence of mine has a mega yacht, regular old mack daddy yacht, top of line personal jet, etc... etc. Even if I could afford those luxuries, I would not live that kind of life because it's just not me. However, I don't begrudge him for it. Aside from the thousands of people he employs from his ideas many years ago, these lavish toys also support many other lives. He employs somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-20 people just to take care of his stuff. Pilots, captains, crew, caterers, etc. Those folks live a nice life on account of his luxuries.
As for govt spending, without the contributions via sales tax revs, property tax revs, and income tax revs from the top 10%... the government would not even meet payroll for govt employees, no less all the contractors, and no less any new porgrams. The horspeower that drives new spending programs and acquistions across the board in the govt world, is the funding over and above steady state costs. The best example I can think of is OPEC. Even though they do not produce the majority of the oil in the world, they do control the net excess oil which is used to meet demand growth. Without the OPEC countries.... oil would be 1000 a barrel.
