7.21.2008

The myth of the rich NOT paying their fair share

Their Fair Share

Excerpt:

the top 1% of taxpayers, those who earn above $388,806, paid 40% of all income taxes in 2006, the highest share in at least 40 years. The top 10% in income, those earning more than $108,904, paid 71%. Barack Obama says he's going to cut taxes for those at the bottom, but that's also going to be a challenge because Americans with an income below the median paid a record low 2.9% of all income taxes, while the top 50% paid 97.1%. Perhaps he thinks half the country should pay all the taxes to support the other half.

Aha, we are told: The rich paid more taxes because they made a greater share of the money. That is true. The top 1% earned 22% of all reported income. But they also paid a share of taxes not far from double their share of income. In other words, the tax code is already steeply progressive.


Comment: It's dangerous, in my mind, when not all of the beneficiaries of our great democracy contribute fairly to the federal treasury.

1 comment:

  1. I remember a comment Obama made during one of the debates that was going on earlier this year. He said something to the effect of "changing the tax code to make it fair." That was a pretty telling statement right there. It didn't have anything to do with mathematical models or based on need, it was simply a socialist, in my opinion, coded term......I should probably have the quote handy to be academically honest. I'm sorry, at the moment I don't have it.

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