Whenever I hear about tax burdens, I find it valuable to use the IRS data.
A summary is located at:

http://www.house.gov/jec/tax.htm

The details behind the summary are located at:

http://www.house.gov/jec/press/2002/irs2.pdf

A few observations:
1) The top 5% of income earners pay 56.47% of the federal taxes.  The bottom
50% pay 3.91%.
2) The tax burden on the top 5% has increased from 42.57% in 1986 to 56.47%
in 2000.
3) Conversely, the tax burden on the bottom 50% has dropped from 6.46% in
1986 to 3.91% in 2000.

I am not sure why the most recent data is from year 2000.

I hope this post is informative.

Regards, Bill Cullen.
Hopkins (small business owner)



-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
David Shove
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 12:28 AM
To: Steve Sumner
Cc: Mpls@Mnforum. Org; Tim Bonham
Subject: Re: [Mpls] The rich be damned


On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Steve Sumner wrote:

> Haven't we learned by now that we shouldn't be playing class warfare?!
> Steve Sumner, Ward 1

We have to play class defense if the rich are cutting their taxes and
raising ours, sending us off to wars for their profits, busting our
unions, shipping jobs to low-wage anti-union countries, backing the
restriction of civil liberties (the "Patriot Act"), destroying small
businesses with Wal-Marts and corporate welfare...  Huge boondoggle 35W
projects and TIF for Target Mpls etc and cuts in education and libraries
etc are the result of the war the rich are all-too-successfully waging on
all the rest of us. We are entitled to self defense.

Whining about class war is a very effective tactic used by the rich to put
us off balance while they pick our pockets. Then the rest of us assume
that what they tell us is common sense since they tell it to us so often.

Mpls should be actively fostering *small business* and *co-ops* run by
non-rich citizens.

--David Shove

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