Your post was a reprint of a WSJ editorial which was roundly criticized - destroyed even by numerous other editorialists... including Krugman in the Times.
The problem with this laughable WSJ editorial is that it focuses only on ONE tax (the federal income tax), while ignoring all the other taxes people pay... payroll taxes, property taxes, FICA, sales taxes, etc.
It also, rather disingenuously, fails to mention all of the (also quite legal) loopholes and special tax preferences and deductions available to high income filers, which reduce their effective tax rate substantially.
For example:
The average effective income tax rate for all individuals in the US (in 1999) was 14.8% (up from 13.1% in 1989).
Yet, the average effective income tax rate for the richest 400 Americans in 1999 (average income $110.5 in 1998) was 22%. This was DOWN more than a quarter from their effective rate in 1995 which was 30%. (Their payments were reduced more than a quarter by a 1997 law, signed by Clinton.)
14.8% to the 22% paid on average by the richest, does not seem like such a huge spread for just this one tax.
When all the other taxes paid by your average working stiff are factored in... the middle class is undoubtedly the 'beast of burden' for our nation... paying percentage-wise far more of their income and wealth in taxes than the richest Americans.
This is so because, although the rich are taxed at a higher nominal rate, the loopholes, tax shelters, and special provisions available to them for reducing their tax burden are so much larger and more effective than the loopholes afforded to the middle class.
The WSJ editorial made a laughably fraudulent argument. |
