Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - 3:14 AM EST

loved this article. it compiles a lot of data, all of which is hard to find, and none of which is avaialble at a single source.

i took particular interest in your "shifting tax burden" point, which most taxpayers missed, in the 2001 Bush Tax Break. i have repeatedly explained to people that it is not just a matter of the rich getting more tax breaks because they pay more taxes, but that the tax break went well beyond that and actually shifted the burden to lower brackets- DESPITE THE FACT that Bush campaigned on the "fact" (lie) that he would give the "VAST MAJORITY" of his tax breaks to "THE MIDDLE CLASS".

thanks again for a really wonderful and detailed article.

chris

Thursday, June 28, 2007 - 11:02 PM EDT

Your article is one of the better analyses of the taxation side of the income outflow equation that I have seen.  Your prejudices do show through however, when you make a point that (a) historically the income tax was on the highest income earners, and (b) the rate of taxation on those folks has declined since roughly 1980.  You also seem to make a cause and effect argument--because the rich were the only ones taxed and they were highly taxed, the country was better off.  Both (a) and (b) are factual, as far as they go.  It would be a more complete argument if at the same time you showed what the spending at the federal level had become, say since the beginning of the federal income tax, as a share of GDP, and the components of federal spending say since 1900.  My guess is what you see is a gigantic increase in entitlement spending, from essentially nothing to a significant portion of the federal budget today.  It seems more than a bit naive to argue on the one hand that only the very wealthy should carry the burden of the federal income tax system, and by implication funding the federal treasury, but on the other hand those who do not pay in get ever increasing federal programs.  Perhaps if we had a minimal government then we would be able to argue that only the rich should support it?  Cheers.

Monday, March 17, 2008 - 2:23 AM EDT

Excellent, excellent article.  Collects and presents a tremendous amount of data.

 You pretty clearly establish that tax rates on the wealthy have gone down and (consequently) wealthy disparity has gone (dramatically) up.  However, you don't discuss the relationship between these two obviously related data and the general effects on prosperity, or at least GDP.  What would be fascinating would be to take your "Effective Total Federal Tax Rates" graph and lay the GDP (or better, a bar graph representing YOY GDP growth) behind it.  

Do you have the data to construct that/those graph/s?

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 2:49 PM EDT

An exceptionally useful analysis.

I wonder if you plan an update for 2008? It would be extremely useful - particularly if you happen to have one almost ready to go and could publish it before the elections in a month and a half... Even if not ready by then, it would be very useful for long-term discussion and for debunking conventional "wisdom".

Thursday, October 16, 2008 - 9:50 AM EDT

Very interesting.....thank goodness that the income tax rates have been reduced drastically since 1980!!!!!  they were insane!!!!  and thank goodness the capital gains tax rate is significantly lower than the ordinary income tax rate.  

Using an example of the top 400 income earners out of 300 million is a bit extreme.  The top of the top have so much money you would simply have to legally cap acceptable income in order to affect them - and THAT IS NOT THE COUNTRY IN WHICH WE LIVE!  That is a socialism. Increasing capital gains will only hurt those the upper middle class ....current estimates are that 50% of americans would be adversely affected by an increase in capital gains.....you will simply make it more difficult for the middle class to acquire any capital, exacerbating the problem that you are highlighting!  

Personally, I do not believe in a progressive tax code.  If taxes are simply to fund the government, why should anyone have to pay a higher PERCENTAGE of their income than anyone else??  Because a lower income person needs it more? Does that mean then that a man should earn more than a woman for the same job just because he has a family to support?

Our tax code should be simple and straightforward.........we want to encourage success, encourage savings and investment, encourage education and encourage charitable giving. 

The bottom line is that taxes are a necessary evil.  

And people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet - it not's FAIR that they have so much money.  We should take it away - right? 

Maybe we can just make it illegal for anyone to earn more than $200,000 or to have more than $1,000,000 in assets.  Let's just give it all to our government, since they spend it SO wisely.   I personally trust Congress - don't you????????