[kevinob11]

I don't quite know the best way to measure it instead, but isn't saying the top 1% of PEOPLE pay 26% a pretty misleading statistic? I have no idea if it is too high. The 1% is a fixed number of people, how rich are they? If they have 99% percent of the wealth then 26% is too low. If they have 1% of the wealth 26% is too high. It also can grow if you lower their tax rate, if they get enough richer they might pay 27% even if you lowered their rates. It feels like we should be saying X% of wealth pays Y% of taxes, I think I could at least have an opinion about that number that has some meaning.

[kevinob11]

Oh, this is knowable, a quick search says the top 1% owns 32% of the wealth (I know this isn't income, so not perfect) but given that I'm going to say I think 26% is either fine or too low.

[wizofaus]

Based on a reported $820k mean income for the top 1% of earners vs something like 47k for everyone else (US figures), it'd be about 15% of total income being earned by the top 1%, which is lower than I would've thought.

[synergy20]

Those numbers are just a few clicks away. I'm not defending them by the way, I'm myself just a regular employee.

Between a communist utopia and an unregulated greedy-driven capitalism nation, here is what we got, not optimal but works better than average. Neither big corps are evil nor poor people are lazy will be able to fix the problems. There is still hope if you keep working hard to fulfill your dreams in US, the worst is doing nothing and blaming all the faults to the system, the big companies, the rich, the COVID...it will make things worse.