[quote=SDEngineer][quote]
The bottom 50% of wage earner pay only 3% of the federal income taxes. The middle class, lower class doesn’t pay any tax other then SS.
The top 1% of wage earners. I think that is above $200k or so pay 40% of the taxes.
That is the problem with our system now. Not enough people share in the cost of government. Since half the people don’t pay tax why should they care what the government spends? What happens is we have a system ran by the special interests and Government has become its own special interest.
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The top 1% also have 33% of the total wealth in this country, and the top 10% around 75% of the total wealth. It looks a lot less unfair once you realize that.
The bottom 50% have something like 5% of the total wealth in the country. It’s hard to save when you’re living paycheck to paycheck.
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In my mind it has nothing to do with wealth. It has everything to do with fair and equal treatment. No way did our founders envision a system where some people would pay 40 times what others paid.
One vote is one vote and no way can 1% of the electorate protect themselves against the other 99%. Its tyranny. We fought our war of independence over many things but one of the main ones was taxation without representation.
Because of this I believe that our tax code is becoming unconstitutional. Our our constitution requires equal treatment under the law and our tax code violates that.
When the majority doesn’t pay any taxes they can demand more and more from the minority who is forced to pay. Think about that. Consider we have $100 Trillion in unfunded entitlements. That would have never happened had everyone been paying enough tax to get them involved and to hold government accountable.
The best solution is to not tax income, only spending. That way everyone pays and more people will get involved. Since the “rich” spend more they will pay more in tax then the “poor”.
Since the majority can’t aford to pay taxes the result should be a drastic cut back in government.
Ideally, our government should be sized to where the average wage earner can afford to pay for it.
