As I noted, the federal individual income tax is the most progressive (major) tax we have. So, yes, the poor pay a smaller percentage of their income in tax than the rich do. However, as I also noted, the payroll and the state and local taxes tend to be regressive. So, the end result of all taxes together turns out to be much more mildly progressive than the federal income tax alone is.
Did you notice that the fact that the top 1% made 16.9% of the income and the bottom 50% made 13.5% of the income means the top 1% made more than 60 times as much per household on average as the bottom 50%?
It depends what one considers their fair share. Some of us might think that taking 25% of the income of someone making $1 million and taking 25% of the income of someone making $10,000 is not exactly inflicting equal pain on both.
And, as I noted, the rich person will generally be paying a much smaller percentage of their income in payroll tax and state sales tax than the rich.
Furthermore, we know that amongst the rich, there are moochers like Romney who pay a way smaller proportion of their income as taxes than others…In fact, they pay a smaller proportion of their income as federal income taxes as I did when I was in a comfortable corporate job paying an upper middle class wage. (If you consider both income and payroll taxes, he was paying a way smaller percentage than I was.)
How can you possibly come to that conclusion looking at your own cite? the top 1% made more than the bottom 50%, their share should be FAR higher than what it is now.
It only works if you assume that income is proof of earning on a moral level. That people who make 100 million produced that much in benefit to the world. It falls apart pretty easily when you include lotto winners, inheritors, CEO’s of failing companies, stock traders, predatory corporate players ect.
In this theoretical universe where what you make is what you deserve of course a tax system that does not tax more heavily the wealthy results in their own economy imploding and them eventually making nothing at all which I guess they would then morally deserve, a little strange since they’d be the same people simply without a non-anarchic world to support their hierarchical exploitation of human nature.
Its the crux of republican thinking of course. Their whole ideology rests on it. That and an invisible man that loves the greedy and hates good sexy time except when its bad sexy time between an old white guy and a prostitute.
In terms of “worthiness” I am not so sure that the lottery winner or the heir is particularly less worthy than the guy who “built that” with hard work. Given the fact that half of all new businesses fail in four years and only three out of ten are still around after ten years, it looks a lot like luck plays an important role in success. I believe you can start out doing basically everything right and just not ever get far enough into the black to make it.