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Originally Posted by NCB
Pan, the top 50% of wage earner pay over 96% of federal income taxes. Why should they pay more? I say the lower 50% need to pay their fair share
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Hmm... another fine example of useless one-liner. I don't know how many times I've had to shoot this crap down here and in other message boards. The lower 50% DO pay their fair share. Your little statistic is the most deceptive 'information' Rush ever posted.
Although the top 50% did indeed pay 96% in 2001, they also collected 86% of all money earned that year.
Here is a litle bit of information if you would like to see the full truth:
http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/richpay.html
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Top 50 Top 25 Top 10 Top 5 Top 1
Percent share of... Total Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent
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Adjusted gross income 100.00 86.19 65.23 43.11 31.99 17.53
Total income tax..... 100.00 96.03 82.90 64.89 53.25 33.89
Population........... 100.00 50.00 25.00 10.00 5.00 1.00
AGI floor ($thousand) N/A 28.53 56.09 92.75 127.90 292.91
As can be seen, the upper 50 percent of wage earners, who earn $28.5 thousand and above, did pay 96.03% of all income taxes. Now, following are the same numbers, divided up into distinct percentile groups:
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PERCENT OF INCOME EARNED AND TAXES PAID OF SELECTED DISTINCT PERCENTILES
0-50 50-75 75-90 90-95 95-99 Top 1
Percent share of... Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent Percent
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Adjusted gross income 13.81 20.96 22.12 11.12 14.46 17.53
Total income tax..... 3.97 13.13 18.01 11.64 19.36 33.89
Population........... 50.00 25.00 15.00 5.00 4.00 1.00
AGI floor ($thousand) N/A 28.53 56.09 92.75 127.90 292.91
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Look at those numbers again. Everyone outside of the top 10% contributed a smaller tax share that their income share. Furthermore, only the top 1% are paying at a rate significantlly higher than their share of income. Personally I'm not going to cry about a group that makes their money by forcing everyone else to work for shit wages.
The bottom line is that if you are getting your information from Rush you are only getting half of the truth.