Pro-conservative discussions
Rules
Notice they start with only the progressive federal income tax, then don't mention sales taxes, property taxes, fuel taxes and every other regressive tax? Because once you fill in the rest of the tax burden, it's essentially flat. The top 1% takes essentially all productivity gains in the economy, while tax burdens are spread across the entire population.
While taxation isn't the only answer, or cause, of the problem, it is part of the solution.
The rich use more fuel, but more things, etc.
They also get far more benefit from police, military, legal protections and processes. As far as tax burden goes, they're getting a bargain. Add in the regulatory capture of the labor market and they're getting slaves cheaper than slavery. Except when they're using actual slaves in our prisons.
That is some weird logic. How do I benefit more from police or legal protections? I don't.
Asking a Democrat who is "the rich" or what is their "fair share" is like asking a computer to calculate the full value of pi.
But I think this prevents articles like this from serving as proper "gotchas". "Fair share" isn't an objective value, so you can't really prove or disprove whether or not "the rich" are paying it.
What is funny is Democrats say they want out taxes more like Europe. That would be mean the rich would pay less.
The narrative I hear is less that they want taxes to be more like Europe, and more that they want our taxes to pay for all of our healthcare. Not quite the same thing.