1%ers Are Not Paying Their Fair Share

The "One Percent" are not paying their fair share. They are paying as much as the bottom 95% of taxpayers do. 

Democrats Say "The 1%" is Not Paying It's Fair Share?

 The 1% is just not paying it's "fair share", say Democrats. What, exactly, would be fair?

Income Mobility -- A Lifetime of Data

In Sunday's NY Times, Mark Rank from Washington University provides a take on "income inequality" looked at from an individual longitudinal perspective, rather than from a desire to create hysteria about abstract statistical groupings. Here are some of his findings:

• Almost three-quarters of the population will be in the top 20% of income earners at least once in their lives.
• Only 12% of the population will be in the top 1% of earners more than one year during their lifetime.
• Only 0.6% of the population will be in the top 1% for more than 10 consecutive years. 

This paints a very different picture than the President and his friends who would like you to think of "The Rich" as a small monolithic group standing at the gates of wealth barring others from entering.

Common sense would tell you that if you took a snapshot of people in their twenties and compared it to a snapshot of people in their fifties, there should be a very large difference in income between the two groups. Should you be upset by this? Would you conclude that those in their 20s are doomed to low incomes for the rest of their lives?

The hysteria that Democrats are trying to generate would be akin to looking at major league baseball batting data, observing that only 1.4% of all hitters batted over .325 in 2013, and then trying to convince players that they have no chance of having a number of multi-hit games during this season. Might as well hang up the spikes and turn to the commissioner to fix this awful situation.

Tax Day "Fairness" Tidbits

20% of the population pays 94% of the federal income taxes. That means for the other 80%, government programs that might increase current or future taxes have virtually no cost to them. And you wonder why they're so popular.




Over the last 30 years the federal income tax average rate has gone down for 99% of the population. The only group experiencing an increase is the reviled Top 1% .

The Wealth Inequality Facts

As if we needed more proof that the "Wealth Inequality" claptrap is simply a political gambit by Democrats and the media to divert attention from actual real problems like Obamacare. Why on earth would it suddenly be a crisis that the wealthiest 1% of Americans actually have a slightly smaller share of total wealth than they did 25 years ago? Once again, for the political class the level of noise is inversely related to the amount of supporting factual evidence.

Understanding Fair Share

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what the term Fair Share means. Many people are under the mistaken impression that it is some fixed number that seems reasonable. That would be wrong. The definition of Fair Share is a percentage of the Federal income tax that is some amount higher than what is being paid today. Thus the following.

Percentage of Federal Income Tax Paid by Top 1% Earners

1979    19%  [Not Fair Share]
1989    23%  [Not Fair Share]
1999    37%  [Not Fair Share]
2009    42%  [Not Fair Share]

So for 2013, Fair Share might be, say, 45%. By 2019 it will be 50% . And so on. It's important to understand this definition. Otherwise we will continue to have fruitless arguments over what a Fair Share really is.