The millionaires are the ones getting a free ride on the back of society.
The dumb choice we made that put us into such debt was the ridiculous tax-cutting for the wealthy that has been going on since Reagan.
check you facts - the top 1% pay an ever increasing share of the tax burden over the last 50 years
Yeah, since '79, the top 1% of income earners have seen their share of the total tax burden increase by about 13%. Why is that? During the same period, their marginal rates have dropped from 70% to 35%, their long-term cap gains tax rate has been reduced from 28% to 15%, their share of gross and net annual household income has more than doubled, and their mean after-tax income has grown, adjusted for inflation, by almost 180% compared to the barely over 20% mean after-tax income growth for the middle quintile. In short, they're paying an increasing share of the tax burden now because they're getting increasingly wealthy, by many times over, compared to every other tax bracket in the country. So, in a progressive tax system, those who make more over time pay more over time--who'd have thought?
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't pretend that drastically increasing taxes on this small group of wealthy households will even begin to solve our problems of entitlement solvency or deficits. But now a .7% tax increase represents the apocalypse to them? Well, good thing they've made all that money in the last thirty years--it helps them buy and pay for all the legislators that will protect them from pitching in a little more when the whole country, which has given them the very opportunity to make such fortunes, is in such trouble.
