1 percent of income earners in the US pay 38 percent of the income taxes. How much more do you want them to pay? - Boehner
Hah! They're not even right about that!
"Since the origins of modern capitalism around 1780, more than two-thirds of the world’s population has moved out of poverty. In China and India alone, more than 500 million have been raised out of poverty just in the last forty years. In almost every nation the average age of mortality has risen dramatically, causing populations to expand accordingly. Health in almost every dimension has been improved, and literacy has been carried to remote places it never reached before.
Whatever the motives of individuals, the system has improved the plight of the poor as none ever has before. The contemporary left systematically refuses to face these undeniable facts."
-- Robert Novak, from the thread Economic Heresies of the Left (Novak on Caritas in Veritate)
In a free society, with a just government and a rational culture,both the rich and the poor get richer together because wealth is not static but is created and grows.If the poor are actually getting poorer, it is the fault of too much government intervention in the economy that is causing economic stagnation or retrogression.
I've heard that dumb, cliche again and again over the past few decades. To hear them tell it, the poor keeps on getting poorer year after year after year that the poor by now should be living in caves, wearing animal skins for clothes and hunting with their bare hands.
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
After reading this much, I don't really care WHAT they went on to "prove".
Comparing growth of the top 1% with the growth of the bottom 20% is just a setup for an absurd comparison.
The top 20% would include a new subculture of government workers at all levels.