Fun with numbers and language
People don't earn their money. They get a "share" of "national income." See how different that is? Are some people getting more than their "share?" Wonder who gets to decide.
It's all in how it's presented.
Mr. Greenstein’s organization will release a report today showing that for Americans in the middle, the share of income taken by federal taxes has been essentially unchanged across four decades. By comparison, it has fallen by half for those at the very top of the income ladder.
This statement would still be perfectly true if, for example, middle Americans had a tax rate of 15 percent, while the rates on the wealthy dropped from 90 to 45 percent. Like I say, it's all in how it's presented.
Note that the top brackets are still paying almost all of the income taxes. In a democracy, having those who pay almost no taxes outnumber those who do has an inevitable result.