Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Via Jonah Goldberg, AEI’s Mark Perry reaches deep into his bag of greatest hits and hauls out the chart on the right:

As the chart below shows (data here), the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.42 percent of all income taxes collected in 2007 ($451 billion), the highest share in modern history for that group….One could even argue that the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were actually huge “tax cuts for the poor and middle class” because they helped to increase the number of “non-payers” by more than 14 million Americans between 2000 and 2007. Secondly, the tax burden on “the rich” — the top 1 percent of taxpayers — reached a record high in 2007 of more than 40 percent, and was higher after the Bush tax cuts than before.

It’s true that the share of income tax paid by the rich went up between 1980 and today.  But that’s because the share of income earned by the rich went up during that period.  In fact, it more than doubled.  And since income taxes are a percentage of income, you’d pretty much expect that if your share of income more than doubled, then your share of income tax would also more than double.

But for the top 1% it didn’t.  It just doubled.  In other words, it went up a little bit more slowly than their actual increase in income.  Why?  Because tax rates on the rich have decreased steadily under Republican presidents since 1980.

Griping about taxes is every American’s birthright.  But if your share of the income pie increases by 135% over thirty years while everyone else stagnates, you’re a pretty lucky ducky.  Surely the least you can do is not complain that your share of the tax bill went up by only 100%?

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate