"I'm afraid we're approaching parity now, given the 2000 election results."
Walter Williams, World Net Daily, 10-25-2000
According to the most recent U.S. Treasury Department figures, in 1997 the top 1 percent of income-earners (those with income of $250,000 and higher) paid 33 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 5 percent of income-earners ($108,000 and over) paid 52 percent, and the top 50 percent ($36,000 and over) paid 96 percent of income taxes. Guess what the bottom 50 percent of income earners paid?
If you're among those who pay little or no federal income taxes, what do you care about tax cuts? Moreover, if you think tax cuts pose a threat to government handout programs, you might be openly hostile and support Al Gore's silly "risky scheme" talk. So many Americans paying little or no federal taxes makes for a natural spending constituency. It's like me in the restaurant: What do I care about extravagance if you're footing the bill?
70% of the public clamors for more from government looking for the top 40% of income earners to foot the bill.
I'd say that unless we manage to change from the income tax on production with exemption's scheme of taxing that we have today, we are already in the soup and keeping any form of an income tax perpetuates the problem.
Thomas Hobbes(1588-1679) had it called it in Leviathan
- "It is fairer to tax people on what they extract from the economy, as roughly measured by their consumption, than to tax them on what they produce for the economy, as roughly measured by their income."