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Comment by yequalsx | Hacker News Reader

In general I agree with you but with one caveat. Right now the very rich pay the lowest percent of their wealth in taxes in many decades. Taxation is the means by which society is able to make its desires known. I would agree wholeheartedly if the taxation was significantly greater than what it currently is int he U.S. (for the wealthy).

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Do you have a source? The data that I've seen shows that the very rich pay about the same effective rate as back in the '50s. The rates were higher in the '50s, but the exemptions were much more liberal.

Here is a source that gives tax revenue as a percent of GDP. This includes all forms of tax. Given that the very wealthy increase their wealth primarily through capital gains and not through income and the capital gains tax is quite low it appears reasonable to conclude that the very wealthy are not overtaxed. This isn't exactly how I phrased my statement so I should revise it. I'll revise thusly, taxes in the United States are not high in comparison to historical standards and are certainly not high in comparison to wealthy countries.

http://www.facethefactsusa.org/facts/a-tax-impact-from-grand...

I was curious so I looked it up. According to this article the top 10% pay 68% of all taxes.

http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/top10-percent-income-e...

Also, the Heritage Foundation is not exactly an unbiased source on this issue.

Here's another take on U.S. taxation: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/tax-reform/news/2011...

They simply choose to emphasize different numbers. The number is correct, right? That link that you posted says that all Americans pay low taxes. My question is shouldn't we all be paying a little more?

That’s the wrong statistic. The question is whether, say, Bill Gates pays a greater or lesser percentage of his income in tax than someone earning 50K.

Most of his income is probably from capital gains, which is only taxed at 15%. I think it's valid to point out very few individuals are paying a lot of the federal taxes.

Sure, it's valid to point it out, but it doesn't suggest any unfairness. You have to look at the percentage that each individual is contributing, and the super-rich do very well by that metric.

It's 23.8% now.

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