DiabloWags said:
The IRS recently released its income tax stats for 2020, and they show the top 1% of earners paid 42.3% of the country's income taxes. Thats a two decade high in the share of taxes the 1% pay. In 2001, the top 1% contributed 33.2% of income tax revenue.
That same 1% reported earnings of 22.2% of AGI on their tax returns, which means the share of taxes paid by the top 1% as a group is roughly DOUBLE their share of income.
Meanwhile, the top 5% of earners reported 38.1% of total AGI but paid 62.7% of all income taxes. The bottom 50% of earners reported 10.2% of AGI but paid 2.3% of all income taxes.
The liberal narrative from Biden and Bernie just doesnt match reality. The data clearly shows otherwise. The affluent do in fact pay more than their "fair" share.
The careful wording of your post tells the story very accurately. But your last paragraph is conjecture that has very little to do with the facts that you accurately presented.
Since the 1980s, corporations, investors, and their lobbyists have pushed hard for -- and won -- massive, historic reductions in
their overall tax burden, mainly through reductions in the Corporate Earnings Tax Rate, reductions in the Capital Gains Tax rates, and various exemptions & loopholes, and the virtual elimination of Tariffs on imported goods. Pre-1980, these sources of Federal tax revenue were the majority, while Individual Income Taxes were only about 10% of Federal tax revenue.
With all these post-1980 corporate & capital tax reductions, the largest corporations and wealthiest oligarchs contribute practically nothing to our federal tax base. As their taxes go down, the percentage of Federal revenue
from the Individual Income Tax is now 51%.
So U.S. corporations & oligarchs have successfully shifted nearly all of their tax burden onto the backs of their Customers and Employees, with the highest-paid employees bearing the majority of the burden. If you're a corporate director or VP, a top attorney, an elite professional athlete, a successful surgeon, or any other top professional who earns a salary,
you're the one who's getting screwed, while your employer and their shareholders are making serious bank from your valuable time & efforts, and paying little or no tax on
their earnings. Most people in this class do not consider themselves Workers, but they are.
"The Affluent" is a term that applies to many people, many of whom are considered
Capital (their income comes from investing & finance), and many of whom are
Workers. The important distinction is that
affluent Workers (or former Workers)
do pay FAR more than their "fair" share.
But large corporations, their largest shareholders, hedge funds, PE, and oligarchs do NOT pay "their fair share." In our current economy, they are extracting the vast majority of the wealth from the system, and sharing far too little, in terms of wages, salaries, benefits, taxes, and donations, to sustain it.
Biden serves Capital, and could care less about Workers, regardless of what he
says. He knows that increasing taxes on "the Rich" polls at about 70%. He also knows that there's zero chance that any budget that he proposes will actually pass. His proposed tax increases are just like the policies that he proposed in his 1st SOTU -- they're designed to have you
think that he's on the side of Workers, but he has no intention of letting those policies become law. If the Dem owner-donors don't want it to happen, it ain't gonna happen. So he kicked off his 2024 campaign talking about taxing "the rich" more. You, me, & everyone else with half a brain knows that it ain't gonna happen.
IF Biden had a single pro-Worker bone in his body, his administration would've settled the Railroad Strike in favor of the railroad Workers, and given them the 7 days of sick leave that they were asking for. Instead, they intervened in favor of the railroads, and the Workers got ONE paid day off. PER YEAR.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is, for all intents & purposes, the ONLY Member of the U.S. Senate who consistently represents the interests of U.S. Workers. He (and to a lesser degree, Sen. Elizabeth Warren) are the only Economic Moderates (that is, favoring a more even balance of power between Labor and Capital). The other 98 Members of the U.S. Senate are Economic Extremists, legally bribed into representing the interests of Capital, and openly hostile to the interests of Labor. If you do any research into Bernie's policy positions, you'll see that he advocates for the interests of Workers, even affluent ones.
So -- many of "The Affluent," who are Workers, do pay their fair share, and then some. But the Affluent Capitalists who have successfully dumped their tax burdens onto the backs of their Workers and Customers are clearly NOT paying their fair share. And it's not only killing our economy; it's killing our small-d democracy, and our society.
