>>>The point is that almost 50% of Americans pay no federal income tax at all. The top 1 percent of income earners paid 38 percent of all federal income taxes in 2008, while the bottom 50 percent paid only 3 percent. Forty-nine percent of U.S. households paid no federal income tax at all.
>
>The top 1% of households held 34.6% of US wealth in 2007 (much higher now) and the next 19% (top managers, professionals, successful small business owners) had 50.5%, meaning that the top 20% held 85% of total US wealth. By your own "skin in the game" measure, they should be paying 85% of the taxes. They aren't.
>
>If you want to focus on income alone and ignore investments and other main drivers of wealth: the top 1% of income earners received 12.8% of all income in 1982, 17% in 2003 and 21.3% in 2006. Plot the trend to confirm that their tax burden hardly is excessive today, even ignoring the dividends and capital gains that often are far greater than salary for such people and that are taxed at only 15%. Also look at the top 20% that would include some here: in 2007 the top 20% received 59.1% of all income and paid 64.3% of all the taxes. This makes no allowance at all for dividends and capital gains taxed at only 15% even though that income is the main driver of wealth once you are doing well, but not much to the 80% of the country that has only 20% of the assets. If people want to resent that bottom 20%, consider that they received 3.5% of all income in 2007 and paid 1.9% of all taxes, with no dividends or capital gains to help them get by.

I see nothing wrong with the picture above. This is capitalism. If I am lazy reading UT messages instead of working hard, learning new technologies, investing my time and money, do I deserve the same wealth as someone who does? <g>