[danaris]

The useful statistic is not "what percentage of the taxes do each quintile/decile/etc pay?"

It's "What percentage of their disposable income (ie, net of housing, food, health care, and other necessary expenses) do each quintile/decile/etc pay in taxes?"

And the answer is going to be that the middle and working classes pay a huge percentage—close to 100% for many—while for the wealthy it's effectively nothing.

[FredPret]

Why?

The important thing is funding the state, not making a personal sacrifice. The economy is based on value, not pain.

[danaris]

....Right. Which is why what I described would ensure that the people who feel the least pain from funding the state are asked to pay the greatest share.

[mathiaspoint]

If you make having neighbors painful don't be surprised when "the rich" stop collaborating and instead work to eliminate them like you're seeing everywhere in the post millennial US now.

[danaris]

I'm not sure what this subthread has to do with having neighbors?

But regardless, "if you try to make the rich actually participate in and contribute to society, don't be surprised if they try to destroy society instead" is exactly the kind of threat that supports the idea that we should, instead, make it impossible to be rich enough to carry that threat out.

Having a functioning and mutually beneficial society is much, much more important than letting outlandishly rich selfish people stay rich.

[FredPret]

...which is what's happening now, and for the past however many decades

[danaris]

Their tax rates have been reduced every time a Republican President has been in office in the last 25 years, and not, to the best of my knowledge, increased enough to counteract that when a Democrat has been in office.

The top marginal tax rates during the right's supposed "golden age" after WWII were much, much higher than they are now.