There is an old saying which applies to courtrooms and debates. It warns one to never ask a question to which they do not already know the answer to. Political hacks, in addition to bad lawyers and poor debaters, often disregard this well founded warning. Instead they plunge headlong into asking questions and only hoping that the answer which supports their ideology will be the one that comes forth. Even though it never has and never will.
My email box is full of individuals pursuing this course. And, once again, thanks to President Obama, they are delving into La La Land. A common refrain that I am hearing from the political left, misguidedly thinking they have found an issue to tout, is how the rich do not “pay their fair share” when it comes to taxes. Thank you Mr. Obama for perpetuating this myth with your completely unsourced claim that billionaires are paying as little as 1% in income taxes.
I actually agree with those liberals emailing me that everyone should indeed “pay their fair share” of taxes. Of course I disagree with them on what that “fair share” should be. And I also disagree with them as to who is not paying their “fair share” of taxes. And unlike the liberals I actually have facts to back me up.
Thanks to the work by the good folks over at the Tax Foundation, who have parsed the latest available IRS data (for 2009) we have a stark look at who is indeed paying what in terms of federal income taxes [1].
The top 1% of all U.S. Tax Payers, those making more than $343,927 per year, send an average of 24.01% of their income to Washington for politicians to vilify them with. Moving down the line, the next 1 to 5% of income earners as a whole send on average 16.40% to Congress and the President to line the nests their own little fiefdom’s. Expanding the range. thee next 5 to 10%, a group I am proud to be included within, send on average 11.40% into the black hole of government. Now, the top 10% to 25% send 8.23% of their income to Washington. Rounding out the upper half of the list, from 25 to 50%, these households pay 5.58%, on average, to the bureaucracy.
Notice the obvious trend? Yep, despite the howls of incredulousness from the left wing, the “rich” pay the most to Washington as a percent of their income. The top 1% who pay 24.01% in income taxes give the U.S. Treasury a whopping 36.7% of all personal income tax collections.
Now, what about the bottom 50%? Well, here we see the people that are certainly by any objective standard not paying their “fair share”. This group, despite often consuming the huge amounts of services and benefits, pay a paltry 1.85% of their income to D.C.’s hedonistic culture. They pay into the coffers just 2.3% of the total take of our federal government. Now consider that programs like Medicaid, Food Stamps and Welfare etc. account for over 25% of the money spent by the federal government? Well, there is even less of a doubt that they are not paying their “fair share”.
The numbers do not lie. But the leaches do because they do not want the “free ride” provided for them by the top 50% who pay their freight to end.
The tired, hackneyed class warfare rhetoric of the political left is nothing more than bluster. The simple fact is that the “rich” not only pay their “fair share” but they pay much, much more than that. I am honestly surprised that they put up with it and do not just go Galt. Boy, that would be a treat. To watch the leaches wail as their teat was forcibly removed from their lips? Priceless.
The money of "other people" is running out. What will you do when it does?
J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner for Examiner.com. He is also the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts The Right Things. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at Liberty Reborn.
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