This Land is your Land, this Land is my Land…
There are things that are happening in our country. There are trends not of our own making, or rather not the result of our own planning. Should we be concerned? Should we be doing something to reverse those trends that seem to be a threat to our liberal democracy?
Should we be concerned that the top 1% of taxpayers are now paying more taxes than the bottom 96%? Does this mean that more and more the richest few own the country, that our land is now their land? Perhaps it’s always been this way, that the country is the property of the rich and powerful, but we still talk as if the country were our country, the country of all of us. Is it?
April 21, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Philip,
Check out this chart, though. It’s not as up to date. But I think the trend is that the poor AND the super-rich are paying a smaller proportion of income in taxes. The middle are paying more.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/12/22/business/wealth-graphic2.jpg
April 22, 2010 at 1:22 am
I’m not sure if these graphs are comparable. You’d have to be more of a statistician than I am to translate the one into the other. But the one is speaking about the total amount of tax revenue coming from the various income groups, and the other about percentages paid in taxes by individuals. The highest income earners do pay a lower percentage, but perhaps there are more of these and the total paid by this group still higher? Or something like that. In any case the disparities are still striking, and I’m not sure what to make of them. P