Kevin Drum observes that our tax code isn’t very progressive with rich people paying basically the same rates as the middle class and the very rich actually paying less than some other income groups:
Kevin’s post also linked to this page which offers this useful addendum to some of what I’ve posted recently about income shares in the United States:
The fact that the top 0.1 percent control 8 percent of national income is hugely relevant to thinking about how to understanding living standards in the United States. We have a similar per capita income to Finland, but our top 0.1 percent is way better off than Finland’s, whereas Finland’s child poverty rate is immensely lower than our own. Various countries come out as slightly poorer on average, even though the average resident of those countries actually has a higher income than the average American.
Don’t worry, though, Robert Samuelson assures us that poor people in the United States all have super-powered lobbyists working for them.
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