The Top 20% Paid 94.1% of Income Taxes in 2009

This chart is based on data in the recently-released CBO report "Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2008 and 2009," showing the share of federal income taxes paid by income group in 2009.  In 2009, almost all (94.1%) federal income taxes collected were paid by just one-fifth of Americans (top quintile) and the top 1% paid almost 39% of all taxes collected.  In contrast, the lowest and second quintiles were net "tax collectors" because that 40% of Americans received more in        ... MORE

VIDEO: Will Taxing the Rich Fix the Deficit?

VIDEO: Economic Mobility is Alive and Well in America!

VIDEO: John Stossel - How Effective Is Class Warfare?

Kyle Olson: Are We Slaves To The Government Class?

Public servants or public masters?    Over the past year, a lot of people have been talking about “the 1%” versus “the 99%.” But if you’re concerned about one class exploiting another for economic gain, that’s the wrong way to look at the problem. The protesters are right about one thing: there are gross class inequities in America. There is one class that  ... MORE

How Strong Property Rights Promote Social Equality

by Timothy B. Lee.  In today’s poetic justice news, Star Wars creator George Lucas is planning to take revenge on his meddlesome Marin Valley neighbors. For years, he’s been trying to get permission to build a new studio in Marin County. But his neighbors wouldn’t budge, insisting that it was a place for homes, not businesses. So now Lucas is pulling out ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: A Book For Republicans

Class warfare: good politics and bad government.   Democrats have been having a field day with the cry of "tax cuts for the rich" — for which Republicans seem to have no reply. This is especially surprising, because Democrats made the same arguments back in the 1920s, and the Republicans then not only had a reply, but one that eventually carried the day  ... MORE

Bill O'Reilly: Hating The Rich

My late father was a man of strong opinion. He despised phonies, cowards and liars. He named names -- sometimes in very close proximity to those being singled out. A veteran of World War II, he recognized a weasel when he saw one. But my dad never denigrated rich people in general. We lived in Levittown, N.Y., where everybody had pretty much the  ... MORE

John Stossel: Making Life Fair

Do you really want to surrender your fate to politicians?   When my wife was a liberal, she complained that libertarian reasoning is coldhearted. Since markets produce winners and losers -- and many losers did nothing wrong -- market competition is cruel. It must seem so. President Obama used the word "fair" in his last State of the Union address   ... MORE

Walter E. Williams: America's Two-Faced Liberals

Behind the facade. President Barack Obama and Wall Street occupiers, along with their allies in the mainstream media and on college campuses, have maintained an ongoing attack on high-income earners, people they call 1 percenters. Listening to their deceitful demagoguery, you would naturally think of them as 99 percenters, but you'd be dead-wrong. Last week, ... MORE

Shikha Dalmia: Obama's Taxing Psychology

Obama needs the Gandhi Rule, not the Buffett Rule. President Obama has been on the stump condemning Senate Republicans for the defeat of the so-called Buffett Rule, his plan to make high-earning Americans pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. The naysayers, Obama thunders, chose “once again to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Devious Taxation

The dynamics of an uneven tax burden.  The Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation does a yeoman's job of keeping track of how much we're paying in taxes and who's paying what. It turns out that American taxpayers worked this year from Jan. 1 to April 17, 107 days, to earn enough money to pay their federal, state and local tax bills. That statistic requires   ... MORE

Michael Bargo Jr: A Battle Democrats Cannot Afford To Win

Actions speak louder than words. There is one project that liberals never complete -- a task that is talked about all the time, especially during campaigns, but for some reason just can't get done. It is "making the rich pay their fair share" of taxes.  Somehow, even though President Obama and his party found the time to write ObamaCare and a huge plan of ... MORE

Holman W. Jenkins Jr: The Inequality Obsession

Do we want to persuade the rich to report less income?  If it were learned that the car driven by the average American is 10 times more likely to burst into flames than the car driven by the richest 1%, what should the policy response be? Should it be to mandate that cars driven by the rich burst into flames more often? Income inequality is a strange obsession, at least ... MORE

Washington Times: Making Tax Day Worse

Dems push more expensive and complicated system. Americans who thought Tax Day was bad this year could find it far worse next year. Tuesday happens to be Tax Freedom Day, the date by which taxpayers have earned enough to pay off Uncle Sam and start earning for themselves. This occasion will fall even later next year if President Obama succeeds ... MORE

Deroy Murdock: The $100 Per Hour Minimum Wage

Don't be small-minded, America. From coast to coast, politicians want to hike the minimum wage. New York State legislators aim to lift it from $7.25 to $8.50 per hour. California lawmakers are weighing a boost from $8.00 to $8.50. Ralph Nader recently urged the Occupy movement to demand that the federal floor increase from $7.25 to $10.00. On March 6, former   ... MORE

Michael Hurd: The Productive And The Unproductive

There are only two classes in a free society.   Mitt Romney claims that his tax cuts will stimulate the economy and pay off the deficit. If history is any guide, this won’t be true. Ronald Reagan cut taxes in the 1980s. For a time, the economy improved and the government gained more revenue. Congress spent that money and expanded the deficit. George W. Bush ... MORE

VIDEO: Brad Schiller - Who Are the 1%?

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Poverty & Dependence

Charles Murray: Why We Dislike The Rich

It's not just the money. The Pew Foundation discovered in a recent poll that tensions over inequality in wealth now outrank tensions over race and immigration. But income inequality isn’t really the problem. A new upper class is the problem. And their wealth isn’t what sets them apart or creates so much animosity toward them. He is not just in the 1%;   ... MORE