That’s from today’s Wall Street Journal, which passes on this as well:
The nearby chart shows that 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.
In other words, the “soak the rich” arguments that we hear from Obama and others on the left really are nothing more than nonsense.
Add to that the estate tax and especially the fact that Social Security, as a program, is also very progressive/redistributionist (someone who, all else equal, pays twice as much in Social Security taxes receives far less than twice as much in benefits).
Unless you are in that 1% you come out ahead under Obama
99 Obama 1 McCain
ite,
And if you think taxing the “rich” is going to solve anything, you’re as naive as the Obama-ssiah