c3 Jason; You know the counter-argument. The income disparity between the bottom quintile and the top quintile (alluding to and "rebutted" here). There's a very healthy debate going on about that side of the coin. But more important, surely if you have kids (and I don't know if you do) you understand that "fair" is never something that can be argued with facts. And finally as you heard recently regarding the proposed added tax on the welathiest to help fund the health plan "Its only 1% more!". When the majority of americans don't have skin in the game it is exceedingly to ask someone else to foot the bill

c3 Yup, I hadn't read Marc Moore's earlier post on this same graph and sure enough there was the counter-argument! Never fight a land war in Asia and never get in an argument over fairness

Mike c3, As the one who raised the counter-argument on the other thread (which I have since updated with some inconvenient numbers), let me clarify that I am not arguing that the rich aren't paying their fair share. I was arguing specifically against the assertion that "There’s nothing else to say" because the graph is all-encompassing. It clearly is not. I agree that the issue of what is their "fair share" is subjective and so cannot be entirely argued with facts (especially incomplete and deceptive ones such as that graph).

c3 Mike; I agree. The graph is however compelling with so many having so little of a stake in their government. What happened to "shared sacrifice"? PS Several times I've done the little math games and discovered how much money you can raise with seemingly minor "tweeks" in the taxes of the very wealthy. And at the same time how comparatively little money you raise with tax increases on the middle and lower classes. But the that compelling math is the very reason we need to be circumspect about our tax increases of the wealthy. Otherwise, we will find ourselves continually moving forward with higher and higher taxes on the wealthy and fewer and fewer obligations for the rest of us.

Tully While "eat the rich" may be popular, it's not a great way of reliably funding government. Look at that graph and notice where the dips are. Normalize against revenue collected instead of against portion of tax burden. If you really want an accurate picture, incude corporate/business taxes paid, as those come fairly directly from owners/from shareholders, which means anyone with any stake in the market, even if it's a small IRA with a few mutual fund shares. Or a pension fund. What you'll find is that taxes paid by "the rich" are highly variable, much more so than taxes paid by the rest of the population, said variance being due to prevailing economic conditions. This is why a broad tax base is always more desirable than a narrow one -- consistency of revenue. The available taxable income at the upper end of the scale is immensely more variable than that of the general population, and so the narrower your tax base, the more variable and less dependable and less consistent your tax revenues are. You can argue about "fairness" all you like -- the above is an immutable fact of taxation and revenue in the real world. Also the fact that the higher you raise taxes, the more incentive the rich have to move their capital and even themselves to lower-taxation areas.

Mike c3 and Tully, I agree that it is a problem that the top 1% are paying more taxes than the bottom 95%. And I agree, as c3 put it, that it is a problem that so many have so little of a stake in their government. However, considering that the reason for that is not that our tax policy has become more progressive (it has not), but because the wealth has become more concentrated at the top, you could argue that it's an even bigger problem that so many have so little of a stake in the *economy* compared to the top 1%. I'm not making any judgment on how things got like that, or what we should do in terms of tax policy, other than arguing that it is not justified to reach the conclusion that their over-all tax rates for the rich are too high based on these numbers alone. And I agree that these numbers don't tell the whole picture, but I'm not the one using these numbers to jump to conclusions such as "The Rich Pay More Than Their Fair Share."

Tully you could argue that it’s an even bigger problem that so many have so little of a stake in the *economy* compared to the top 1% "Stake" is even more relative and subjective than "fair." The stake in the economy of a middle-class production worker is no smaller than that of the factory owner -- to the production worker. As a whole bunch of laid-off production workers can tell us.

Mike You're right. "Stake" is probably not the right word. "Investment" maybe would be better. But your criticism of the word "stake" applies to c3's usages as well. Even people who don't pay taxes have a stake in the policies that the government implements. So, whatever the word, I agree that it is a bad thing that the middle and lower class is losing ground compared to the super-rich, both in terms of tax proportion and wealth proportion. But it appears to be the latter that has led to the former.