I think your reply is cut off. :) Anyhow, to the best of my knowledge, the best study on the subject is summarized in this graph: http://goo.gl/tmywx http://g

I think your reply is cut off. :) Anyhow, to the best of my knowledge, the best study on the subject is summarized in this graph: http://goo.gl/tmywx http://goo.gl/tmywx What that shows is that no tax system has a significant impact on Gini. Switching from the most progressive tax system in the study (the US one) to the least (the UK one) would result in a change of Gini of around 0.02. If you rank OECD members by Gini coefficients, such a large change in taxation wouldn't even change the ranking; the US would remain at 4th most unequal. As such, I think it's fair to say that we can tinker with the tax system without fear of victimizing the poorest off. (And, also, that if we want to help the poorest off, we need to pull some lever other than tax policy.)