00:00We hear all the time from the left that we need to tax the rich and that the rich don't
00:04pay their
00:04fair share. But is that actually true? Actually, the answer is no, and the U.S. has the most
00:11progressive tax system in the developed world. Take a look at this chart, which shows you the
00:16share of income earned by various groups in the country and then the share of all income taxes
00:20paid by them. The bottom 50% make 12% of all income in the country, which is an admittedly
00:26small share, but accordingly, America only pulls 3% of its taxes from them. On the flip side,
00:33the top 1% is doing quite well and bringing in 21% of all income, but they also have
00:38to pay 40%
00:39of income taxes. You can see here that over the past 20 or so years, the top 1% has
00:45actually been
00:46paying progressively a little bit more over time relative to the rest of the tax base.
00:51Of course, the system is not perfect, and there are definitely people who exploit loopholes,
00:55but that's a much better critique of the tax system than saying that the rich are not pulling
00:59their weight.
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