{"id":8585,"date":"2009-04-19T14:55:07","date_gmt":"2009-04-19T19:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=8585"},"modified":"2013-04-15T16:22:26","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T21:22:26","slug":"social-class-and-the-tax-burden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/04\/19\/social-class-and-the-tax-burden\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Class and the Tax Burden"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolicyMic<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I recently came across two really fascinating figures.\u00a0 The United States has a system of “progressive taxation.”\u00a0 This means that the richer you are, the more you pay in taxes.\u00a0 This first figure, found at The American Prospect<\/a>, shows the percentage of total income earned by\u00a0Americans (split up into quintiles) and the tax rates for each group.\u00a0\u00a0 The poorest quintile, then, pays 4.3 percent of their income to the government, but only makes 3.9 percent of all income dollars each year.\u00a0 In contrast, the richest quintile brings home 55.7 percent of all income dollars each year, and pays 25.9 percent of that in taxes.<\/p>\n

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Ezra Klein writes:<\/p>\n

When you look at percentage of total tax liabilities, the rich do in fact bear a heavier burden. But it’s because they have so much more money.<\/em> They are not bearing a heavier burden as a percentage of their<\/em> incomes. They’re bearing it in relation to everyone else’s<\/em> incomes… People hear that the top 20 percent pay almost 70 percent of the country’s income taxes and nod their head. That’s unfair! But it mainly seems unfair because people don’t know the top 20 percent accounts for almost 60 percent of the national income.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This second figure (from Matthew Yglesias<\/a> via Thick Culture<\/a>) illustrates increasing income inequality.\u00a0 It compares the average after-tax income for each\u00a0 quintile, and then the top 1 percent, in 1979 and 2006.\u00a0 During that time, the poorest fifth saw their incomes increase 11 percent, the middle fifth saw their income increase by 21 percent, and the richest fifth saw their income increase by 87 percent.\u00a0 Check out the percent increase for the top one percent!<\/p>\n

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(For more great illustrations of income inequality in the U.S., see here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and\u00a0here<\/a>; for a comparison\u00a0of income inequality in the U.S. and elsewhere, see\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

What does fair look like?<\/p>\n

Is this kind of income inequality fair? \u00a0Is it fair to take a higher proportion of taxes from richer people?\u00a0 Should we be taking even more from the rich?\u00a0 Should we be taking less from\u00a0any group?<\/p>\n

Does it matter where the money is going?\u00a0 I have to admit, I was feeling a little crappy about taxes when we were spending billions of dollars on war, but now that we need to kick start the economy and deal with our debt, I feel fine about them.<\/p>\n

Has the economic crisis affected your opinions on (progressive) taxation?\u00a0 How?<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolicyMic. I recently came across two really fascinating figures.\u00a0 The United States has a system of “progressive taxation.”\u00a0 This means that the richer you are, the more you pay in taxes.\u00a0 This first figure, found at The American Prospect, shows the percentage of total income earned by\u00a0Americans (split up into quintiles) and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,253],"class_list":["post-8585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8585"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54820,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8585\/revisions\/54820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}