That figure has been in the news and opinion columns a great deal in the past couple of weeks. It is the percentage of Americans who pay nothing in federal income taxes (as distinct from federal withholding for social insurance).
Some of the articles and related comments have focused on the concept that everyone should be paying something, so that they "have some skin in the game" so that there is an incentive not to vote for spending that others will have to pay for. Some have approached the 47% as "freeloaders."
It is funny that in our largest state, where, for 30+ years, Proposition 13 has put a ceiling on property taxes, so that landholders, who are the primary beneficiary of the effects of state and local spending (and federal funding of state and local projects) can expect their tenants to contribute mightily to the projects they vote for -- and no one has made an impression by pointing this out.
And none of the articles I've seen about the 47% figure -- which went viral after an article by Bob Williams in the WaPo -- have spent much time exploring the policy decisions behind this.
I am reminded that according to our official Federal Poverty Guideline, about 13% of us live "in poverty." And that even the Census Bureau, which collects and reports the data on who lives below the Federal Poverty Threshold (a retrospective figure which relates closely to the FPG) willingly recognizes that the Federal Poverty threshold and guideline are merely a statistical yardstick, with no particular logical relationship to the cost of living anywhere in America.
I am reminded that for the states for which a Self-Sufficiency Standard Study has been published (about 35 in all), the bare-bones cost of living for a young working family typically runs from 180% of the Federal Poverty Guideline -- in the least expensive counties (where very few people live) to perhaps 210% in the major cities of our smaller states to 300% or 400% in the major cities in our larger states.
Should the incomes -- mostly wages -- of our working people whose incomes are insufficient or barely sufficient to meet their own and their families' most modestly defined needs, be taxed?
I am reminded of the Overlooked and Undercounted studies, which typically follow a Self-Sufficiency Standard Study, and seek to quantify the number and percentage of working-age families whose incomes are insufficient to cover their bare-bones cost of living. Significant percentages of these families are at these income levels. 30% to 35% sticks in my mind -- and a larger percentage of America's children.
I am reminded that a large percentage of today's seniors are hugely reliant on their income from Social Security, and that the level of Social Security income is established upon retirement and thereafter only rises to keep up with the CPI-U; our oldest retirees are receiving Social Security incomes which are a function of their wages 30 years ago -- roughly as logical as California property taxes for long-time owners being based on the selling price of California housing 30 years ago!
I am reminded that many people get to deduct their mortgage interest and real estate taxes from their taxable income (they're typically in the coastal states; in the heartland states, the standard deduction often turns out to be higher, since taxes and interest payments tend to be lower ... which may correlate to the percentage of children who attend 4 year colleges).
And I am reminded that state and local taxes fall more heavily on low-income people than they do on high income people. (See "Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States", particularly the "Averages for All States" table on page 124 of 130), which shows that, on average, the bottom quintile of us pay 10.9% of our income in state and taxes, while the fourth quintile pays 8.5% and the top 1% pays just 5.2%, on average.
I am reminded of our concentration of income:
- 10% of us receive 47.19% of the before-tax income
- 20% of us receive 60.96% of the before-tax income
- 40% of us receive 79.14% of the before-tax income
- 60% of us receive 90.37% of the before-tax income [see middle-class agenda, on the next page of this blog]
So the bottom 40% of us receive less than 10% of the before-tax income. And those who think they don't pay enough in taxes would like them to pay more into the system than they already do? The problem is one of low wages, unemployment and underemployment. The best solution to these problems I've come across lies in the ideas of Henry George. The law of wages is something like the law of gravity: we operate in ignorance at our own risk.
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