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No, the Pareto Principle explains why the top 20% earn 51.3% of all income. An extremely progressive tax policy explains why the top 20% pay 83.9% of all income

No, the Pareto Principle explains why the top 20% earn 51.3% of all income. An extremely progressive tax policy explains why the top 20% pay 83.9% of all income tax. There's nothing naturally occurring about our tax policy.

bdcs 12y ago
>An extremely progressive tax policy Except for the fact that effective tax rates on "money received" (income + cap gains + net carried interest) is extraordinarily regressive, with people paying <10% on tens of millions earned per year (cf., most famously, Warren Buffet).
zanny 12y ago
They earn 51% of income but own more than 84% of wealth, especially the means of production. Also, talking about fifths of the economy skews the conversation in the wrong directions, because its only the top .001% of income earners that are outliers. The 80-99.9% quartile is paying a fraction of taxes and controls a fraction of wealth, and the 200k above them are skewing that entire bracket hugely. If you are in the top "10%" (ie earning around 200k) you are not paying magnitudes more in tax than everyone else, relative to your wealth. You are just being grouped in with extreme outliers that make these statistics pointless. Even if you want to make a war between the 80-99.9% and the other 80%, the alternative perspective is that the poor are so poor they have no money to pay in income tax. If median wages have not been stagnant or declining in the US for half a century the bottom 99.9% of income earners would be paying a larger percentage share of the tax burden. Just look at all the investigations into how SV companies conspire to keep developer income down. The real value of a lot of engineers, especially the industry veterans, is way beyond the 200k they are often paid, but just because you are doing "so much better than the average" engineers in those income brackets are condemned for asking their fair share, when the real problem is that 99.9% of people are not getting their fair share because of a systemic loss of labor organization.

bdcs 12y ago

>An extremely progressive tax policy Except for the fact that effective tax rates on "money received" (income + cap gains + net carried interest) is extraordinarily regressive, with people paying <10% on tens of millions earned per year (cf., most famously, Warren Buffet).

zanny 12y ago

They earn 51% of income but own more than 84% of wealth, especially the means of production. Also, talking about fifths of the economy skews the conversation in the wrong directions, because its only the top .001% of income earners that are outliers. The 80-99.9% quartile is paying a fraction of taxes and controls a fraction of wealth, and the 200k above them are skewing that entire bracket hugely. If you are in the top "10%" (ie earning around 200k) you are not paying magnitudes more in tax than everyone else, relative to your wealth. You are just being grouped in with extreme outliers that make these statistics pointless. Even if you want to make a war between the 80-99.9% and the other 80%, the alternative perspective is that the poor are so poor they have no money to pay in income tax. If median wages have not been stagnant or declining in the US for half a century the bottom 99.9% of income earners would be paying a larger percentage share of the tax burden. Just look at all the investigations into how SV companies conspire to keep developer income down. The real value of a lot of engineers, especially the industry veterans, is way beyond the 200k they are often paid, but just because you are doing "so much better than the average" engineers in those income brackets are condemned for asking their fair share, when the real problem is that 99.9% of people are not getting their fair share because of a systemic loss of labor organization.