...and so an exchange rambles on, heedless of its digression from the subject line and the question that initiated it. I guess the short answer would be "Living wage? Kill jobs? Myth? Who cares?"
On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Max Sawicky <[email protected]> wrote: > The effective rates don't speak to the shares borne by income class. So it > is true that lower income people pay non-trivial rates of tax (in the sense > of shares of their income), but it is also true that the bulk of the revenue > comes from upper classes. > > http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=558 > > Naturally, those in lower income levels contribute less because they have > less income, as brad noted. > > > > On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Doug Henwood <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> On May 11, 2011, at 1:52 PM, brad wrote: >> >> > I don't understand why we would want to debunk the idea that most >> > federal income tax is paid by the top. It is simply a sign that the >> > middle class has disappeared and that the bulk of people now fall >> > bellow the $33,000 cut off for which low income tax credits reduce >> > their federal taxes to zero. If we regrow the middle class their >> > portion will go up. You can't squeeze water out of a rock. >> >> That's not really true. There have been major changes to tax rates over >> time. Here are some numbers from the CBO, which I realize make for a less >> snappy soundbite but have the virtue of being accurate. >> >> The first panel of the table is the effective tax rate (what people >> actually pay, not what's on the books) for the bottom, middle, and top >> quintiles and the top 1% for all federal taxes; the second is for the income >> tax only. Note the big shift from positive to negative rates at the bottom >> (mostly the EITC): >> >> >> bottom 20% middle 20% top 20% top 1% >> all >> --- >> 1979 8.0 18.6 27.5 37.0 >> 1984 10.2 18.0 24.3 28.2 >> 1994 6.6 17.3 27.4 35.8 >> 2007 4.0 14.3 25.1 29.5 >> >> income >> ------ >> 1979 0.0 7.5 15.7 21.6 >> 1984 0.7 6.7 14.1 19.3 >> 1994 -3.9 5.3 15.0 23.0 >> 2007 -6.8 3.3 14.4 19.0 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> pen-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >> > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > -- Sandwichman
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