By Dustin Beilke

Forty-five wealthy people have joined together to call upon the federal government to start down the road of tax fairness and put an end the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. They call themselves the Patriotic Millionaires.

They are not alone. Warren Buffet and many other wealthy people have come forward through the years to declare that they are undertaxed and benefit disproportionately from public expenditures. They also make the case that the tax system is the fairest way to pay it forward; a much better alternative to voluntary tax payments or charity.

A former hedgefund manager who is one of the 45 Patriotic Millionaires says "nobody wants to feel like a chump." In other words, he thinks he should have to pay his share toward maintaining public services and paying down the deficit, but he thinks other millionaires should, too.

The neoconservative argument against tax fairness is that wealthy people will invest all their non-tax income in job creation. Every legitimate study ever conducted to test this supposition has found it to be untrue. Middle income and poor people spend money they don't pay in taxes, thus stimulating the economy, and wealthy people save it, hide it, or "invest" in things like synthetic collatoralized debt obligations.

Somehow I do not think these 45 millionaires will find themselves at the center of the debate over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy or eliminate them. But I could be wrong. All of us who have an interest in this debate--and that is, well, all of us--should bring these 45 organized millionaires up whenever and wherever we can.