Robert Reich - The logic of Taxing the Rich, and Why Dems are Afraid to Use It...

[bridgit]

'No candidate for president has suggested that the nation should raise the marginal tax rate on the richest beyond the 38 percent rate it was under Clinton (it’s now 35 percent, but the richest of the rich, as I’ll explain in a moment, are paying only 15 percent). Yet new data from the IRS show that income inequality continues to widen. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are earning more than 21 percent of all income (the data are from 2005, the latest the IRS has examined). That’s a postwar record. The bottom fifty percent of all Americans, when all their incomes are combined together, is earning just 12.8 percent of the nation’s income.'

http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2007/10/logic-of-taxing-rich-and-why-dems-are.html

[babylonsister]

1. "Earning" more than 21%? This sucks. Funny, I've always trusted Robert

Reich. I have also believed him. Thanks.

[papau]

2. Data is on the census bureau site - there may be tables in DOL but I doubt it -the IRS of course has

breakouts by income level with detail by type of income declared (a little screwed up and under reporting the income of the rich as trusts and partnerships are not broken out by who ones them and cap gain income may not be more than shown because of accounting gimmicks).

You are right to trust Reich - he either uses stats that can be found on the internet, or he will state exactly where his facts are coming from if they are not on the internet.

[sutz12]

3. We should tax the rich for one simple reason...

That's where the money is.

:shrug:

[TahitiNut]

4. This might give folks some idea what's happening ...

The data for these graphs comes courtesy of the Social Security Administration. The SSA tracks total payroll earnings for all workers as a part of determining individual eligibility and forming a statistical base for actuarial projections. These graphs display a Lorenz curve which reflect the cumulative earnings of all workers, ordered from low to high. The more the curves "sag" then the more inequitably payroll income is distributed. The measure of that "sag" is called the "Gini coefficient" or "Gini Ratio." The larger the Gini Ratio, then the greater the difference between the incomes of low-paid workers and high-paid workers.



Some sense of the comparative magnitude of payroll income increases (in current dollars) can be gleaned from the fact that the median wage increased about $600 between 2004 and 2005, while the average wage increased by about $1,250 ... more than twice as much.