What you miss is that income taxes are a small fraction of the total for the non-rich, and almost everything for the rich. Total taxes as a fraction of income a

What you miss is that income taxes are a small fraction of the total for the non-rich, and almost everything for the rich. Total taxes as a fraction of income are fairly flat by quintile, dropping for the very rich (multi-millionaires and billionaires, who pay lawyers and acocunts to have income transmuted into capital gains, taxed at 15%). http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2010.pdf http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2010.pdf You miss this point because the mendacity is useful to the very rich, who pay their henchmen in Congress and the Murdoch media companies to repeat it endlessly.