Progressive taxation combined with regressive service is not a good thing if you’re trying to avoid spontaneous tavern (or nation) renovation.

Look at that crowd again and find the richest person there. That individual will pay 37% of all the income taxes owed by those 100 people. The 10 richest people in the crowd will pay 71% of the income-tax bill. The 40 most successful people will pay 99% of everyone’s income taxes

Apparently, you define “success” as making money. I would define “success” as doing your job very well, whatever your occupation may be. And keep in mind that those 40 most ‘successul’ people paying 99% still have assets valued in the billions. That’s why Warren Buffet and Bill Gates’ dad, among others, opposed a repeal of the estate tax. Even they recognize that progressive taxation is fairest in an economically stratified society. Besides, not all of the superrich earned their wealth. Seven of the top twenty wealthiest Americans inherited their fortunes.

It seems like people are reading either too much or too little here. The parable says essentially this: “When poor people don’t pay taxes, then tax cuts—any tax cuts—can be described as benefiting the rich.” Duh!

The implied message is that politicians who turn tax cuts into a political issue are guilty of misrepresenting what is happening. If they want to complain that government services are decreasing as a result, that’s a valid argument. But without discussing the consequences, saying that tax cuts benefit the rich is misleading propaganda.

People respond to incentives, and changing tax rates changes these incentives. Also different tax schemes can be more or less efficient. For example, most economists agree that the corporate income tax is a harmful tax. The tax just gets passed on to consumers anyway, and the end result is just wasteful since nothing productive is done except effort spent to comply with or avoid the tax.

Other goals, like maximizing long term gdp growth, are more useful metrics for choosing tax schemes. And there is solid evidence higher marginal rates discourage productive activity (and encourage it’s untaxed alternative-leisure).

And, to dip into the weeds of class warfare for a moment, the poor benefit much more when their richer, more productive fellow citizens engage in productive activities as opposed to leisure.

I think it helps to be explicit about criteria for evaluating economic proposals. I think intuitive ideas about justice are idiosyncratic and practically useless. For me, long tern gdp per capita growth is the primary criteria. A secondary criteria is equity (ie distributive fairness), so avoiding Latin American style GINI coeffficients seems wise. So I do favor redistribution to a degree. Enough to maintain social order.

The poor will benefit much more from decades of high gdp growth and productivity growth, than they will by a few years of soaking the rich. But the poor, who are uneducated, can not be counted on to understand these arguments or their own long term (decades) self-interest. So bribing them with redistribution is sound policy.

Of course, more ethnically homogenous states can support greater redistribution. There is a much lower limit in a country like America than a country like Sweden.

Jim makes a good point. As the wealth distribution in the US is increasingly skewed, the tax burden will follow suit.

Nobody is going to get any sympathy from me complaining that they pay too much income tax, sorry.

I don’t think that is quite right. The barman here is the government and the beer is government expenditure. Therefore the 4 who pay the least (in fact nothing) would get the most beer and the richest man the least. He would have to fork over more cash (beyond the $59) to buy his own premium beer.

If your political platform is robbing Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on Paul’s vote.

And the old Reagan classic:

Democracy is three foxes and a chicken voting on what to have for dinner.

...

On a serious note many countries have major problems with market-dominant minorities. The US has always had a market-dominant majority (ie white people), but that seems likely to change over the next 50-100 years. It will still have a market-dominant plurality.

And actually, I believe the avg Asian-American (esp. Indian-American) has a higher income than the avg White. So far there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of resentment there. Human nature being what it is, some will probably develop.

I do think the demonization of the white man that’s been commonplace in media for the past several decades is harmful to social cohesion. I guess demonizing a powerful group is better than demonizing a minority group, but only marginally. Perhaps we should return to the time-tested tactic of demonizing foreigners! :-) Or, even better and more time-tested, the tribe up-river or in the next valley who pees in our river and steals our best sheep. Those bastards!

Since your taxes are due today and it is probably too late to evade any taxes you weren’t going to dodge anyway, you will be happy to learn that you are among the few and the proud!($)

If the tax forms you’re filing this year show Uncle Sam entitled to any income tax, you increasingly stand alone. The income tax system is so bad, and increasingly reliant on a shrinking number of Americans to pay the nation’s bills, that 40% of the country’s households—more than 44 million adults—pay no income taxes at all. Not a penny.

Think of it this way. After dropping off your tax forms at the Post Office, you find 100 people standing on the sidewalk. Forty of them will be excused from paying income taxes thanks to Congress. Twenty of them, the middle class, will pay barely a thing. The 40 people who remain, the upper middle class and the wealthy, will pay nearly all of the income taxes.

Look at that crowd again and find the richest person there. That individual will pay 37% of all the income taxes owed by those 100 people. The 10 richest people in the crowd will pay 71% of the income-tax bill. The 40 most successful people will pay 99% of everyone’s income taxes.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible, INDEED.

Whenever I hear that the tax cuts “are only for the Rich” I want to throttle someone. They pay a majority of the taxes to begin with

Also with the amount of money they get they are more likely to invest it in start up companies etc. instead of beer and big screens