Quote:Another idiotic knee jerk liberal platitude. Who do you think pays taxes? Rich people? Bahahahaha. No, they rig the reins of power such that they never have to pay taxes. The bulk of taxes are paid by the middle class, and always will be. You are taking from the middle to give the the lower middle and lower classes. The rich are out of your grasp unless you propose to tax actual wealth.While I certainly agree with you that the extremely wealthy, whose "income" is almost entirely in the form of capital gains and other easily-disguised forms, do not pay their fair share of taxes, it is certainly not true that the majority of taxes are paid by the "middle". The top 10% of income earners pay almost 70% of the total income tax bill, and the top 1% pay almost 40%. Unless the top 10% (or 1%!) are your "middle class," it is not true that the rich do not pay the most taxes, nor is it true that they do not pay the majority of taxes.
For context, the lowest earner in the top 10% earns about 113,000 dollars per year - that's almost quadruple the mean income. The lowest earner in the top 1% earns just over 410,000 dollars per year. 40% of income tax dollars are coming from these guys and dolls, earning just shy of a half million every year. Maybe some people near the bottom of that 10th percentile are "upper middle class" highly earning professionals, but by and large, we're talking about people with way more than enough income to live a very comfortable life.
That's not even counting capital gains taxes, of which the filthy rich pay the vast majority, since they are the ones with the capital making the gains. Nor corporate taxes, which almost definitionally are not paid by Joe Middle Class.
Now, the rich might not pay the highest *rate* of taxes, which is something that should be fixed, although that's a notoriously tough problem. But trying to cast this as taking a slice of the "middle class" is bogus. Most of the money the government brings in still comes from the highest earners, not the middle of the pack.
-Jester
Source, 2007 numbers.