While I agree with his premis, this stat is meaningless if it is not indexed for inflation...
"While I agree with his premis, this stat is meaningless if it is not indexed for inflation..."
Step it up a notch dude, why not make 50K when 50K was real money like I did in the '80's. $50K is barely enough to get by on unless you owe less that $100K on your home.
Point: Indexed for inflation we are all lower middle class if combined income is sourced.
You're on the right track, but you also have to compensate for overall economic growth. Even in constant dollars, more people make over $50,000 in 1990 dollars than in 1990. What you have to do is pick some percentage of the population (say 2%) and ask what percentage of the overall burden they bear, as compared to when Bush took office.
Of course, there's another way to look at it. Everybody's getting rich in real terms. Even if taxes become "regressive", it's still only a matter of time before "the rich" bear the entire tax burden, because even the lower tax brackets will be objectively rich. Compared to the rest of the world, that's already true.
"The percentage of federal income taxes paid by those who make more than $200,000 a year has actually risen from 41% to 47% in recent years."
I also agree with the basic idea of the article. But I am confused with the above statement. Isn't the percentage of taxpayers making over $200,000 necessary for this to be properly compared. Maybe they are making a greater percentage of aggregate income (not sure whether this is the right term), therefore paying a greater percentage of taxes. I am not a statistician, but this article seems to leave out a lot of important information.