President Biden says that 3,500,000,000,000 equals 0.

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

The study is called "Who Really Cares", done by Arthur Brooks, who has a lot of experience in public policy.

It's not a study, it's a book written by someone with an opinion.

But now I see where you get your rhetoric.

Brooks is a prototypical member of the modern Republican elite. His ideology is rooted centrally in the class war, a struggle between what he calls “the makers” and “the takers.” He inhabits an imaginary world in which the former are being hounded nearly to extinction by the latter. “At some point,” he sorrowfully predicts, “the rich (as defined by the 30 percent) will pay all the income taxes in America. For the 30 percent coalition, this is fair and just.”

Brooks’s portrait of a world in which the rich are ruthlessly exploited in the name of absolute equality is long on hysterical rhetoric and very short on data. What little data Brooks presents is almost invariably wrong. “In America,” he declares, “the top 5 percent of earners bring in 37 percent of the income but pay 60 percent of the taxes.” This is false. The top 5 percent of income earners pay 38.5 percent of all taxes. And a system where the richest 5 percent earn 37 percent of the income and pay 38.5 percent of the taxes is not, I would submit, a draconian left-wing imposition.


Where does Brooks get this wildly wrong figure? The number he cites describes the share of federal income taxes paid for by the richest 5 percent. But the American tax system is a mix of regressive and progressive taxes. State and local taxes, as well as federal payroll taxes, tend to levy higher rates on the poor and middle class than on the rich. The income tax, which is steeply progressive, helps to tilt the balance of the burden back in the other direction. When conservatives portray the tax code as unfair to the rich, they usually cite just the income-tax burden, calculating that their audience will fail to notice that “income taxes” do not mean taxes as a whole. Brooks uses the term “taxes” when he means “income taxes.” He has fallen for his own ruse.