"Jeff" wrote in message

The professor leaves out a few details worth keeping in mind: The poorest
40% is not just lazy people looking for a free beer.

He never implied they were.

It includes retired people, kids and college students, people with
disabilities, and a large part of the armed forces. And while they pay a
smaller portion of their income then most, they do pay some, and they also
have to pay the same sales tax on many consumer items.

The demographics of the different levels are irrelevant.

And at the other end of the scale, most of the people above the 40th
percentile pay roughly the same part of their income. With the tax cuts,
the super-wealthy actually pay a smaller percentage of their income than
the upper middle class.

If tax cuts for the highest income group include closing the loopholes, I'm
all for them. The top marginal tax rate used to be somewhere around 75%
(Eisenhour era), but the loopholes were like Swiss cheese. The wealthiest
paid 75% of not much, if they had good accountants. Today the top marginal
rate is around 40%, but the average taxpayer in that group pays far more
than he did during the 75% days. Sort of shoots the idea of tax cuts
resulting in less revenue from the top income group.

And of course this only includes federal tax; the state tax system is
often very regressive. In FL, for instance, the wealthiest by 2.7% of
their income in state taxes, while the poorest 20% pays over 14%. Even in
states like MA that try to be non-regressive, the super-wealthy get a
significant break.

The result of this is that pretty much across the board, almost everyone
pays about the same tax, as a percentage of their income. It comes out to
about 30%, but for the super-wealthy, its closer to 26%.

We all pay about 50% or more of our annual income in taxes, which include
sales taxes, fuel taxes, hotel taxes, state, local, and federal taxes, and
so on, ad nauseum.

Max