The Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd - David Sirota

[Swede]

What They Will Scream: But the rich still "pay close to 60 percent of this nation's taxes!"

What You Should Say: Such statistics refer only to the federal income tax.


When considering all of "this nation's taxes" including payroll, state and local levies, the top 5 percent pay just 38.5 percent of the taxes.

What They Will Scream: But 38.5 percent is disproportionately high! See? You've proved that the rich "contribute more than their share" of taxes!

What You Should Then Say: Actually, they are paying almost exactly "their share." According to the data, the wealthiest 5 percent of America pays 38.5 percent of the total taxes precisely because they make just about that share — a whopping 36.5 percent! — of total national income. Asking these folks to pay slightly more in taxes — and still less than they did during the go-go 1990s — is hardly extreme.

Stripped of facts, your conversation partner will soon turn to unscientific terrain, claiming it is immoral to "steal" and "redistribute" income via taxes. Of course, he will be specifically railing on "stealing" for stuff like health care, which he insists gets "redistributed" only to the undeserving and the "lazy" (a classic codeword for "minorities"). But he will also say it’s OK that government sent trillions of dollars to Wall Streeters.

And that's when you should stop wasting your breath.

http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/the-me-first-screw-everyone-else-crowd.html

[hfojvt]

1. very nice, except for one big thing - the title is wrong

"The me-first"? Most of those people you will have to argue with are NOT part of the top 5%. So when they get all agitated about taxes, it is not about "me". For some reason, they will run to the barricades to protect the top 5%.

It could be that they think they are in the top 5%.

That's why I like to remind people of where the lines are.

Top 1% - $388,806
top 5% - $153,542
top 10% - $108,904
top 25% - $64,702
top 50% - $30,563

That is for income tax filers, though, so the statistics are probably skewed down by millions of teen-agers who file tax returns and are in the bottom 50% here while they really live in middle class households. My nieces come to mind.

[JackintheGreen]

2. I had no idea this was the breakdown

I knew the top 1% (approximately) and the cut-off for the bottom 50%, but it's the middle that's really interesting. Can you source it, please?

[hfojvt]

3. sure, IRS stats

here http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=129270,00.html

table 1 of the Early release of returns with positive AGI has that breakdown

although table 5 above it is interesting too, it includes the top .1% since 2001. In that time, their share of income has gone from 8.1% to 11.92%

[JackintheGreen]

4. Thanks for the link. n/t