Why Sanders call to raise taxes resonates more than when Mondale said it in 1984

Bernie sanders

Because 45% of people pay no income tax – so raising taxes on taxpayers – hey, why not?

This article originated on Marketwatch and was picked up by the NY Post.

An estimated 45.3 percent of American households — roughly 77.5 million — will pay no federal individual income tax, according to data for the 2015 tax year from the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan Washington-based research group. (Note that this does not necessarily mean they won’t owe their states income tax.)

Despite the fact that rich people paying little in the way of income taxes makes plenty of headlines, this is the exception to the rule: The top 1 percent of taxpayers pay a higher effective income tax rate than any other group (around 23 percent, according to a report released by the Tax Policy Center in 2014) — nearly seven times higher than those in the bottom 50 percent.

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On average, those in the bottom 40 percent of the income spectrum end up getting money from the government. Meanwhile, the richest 20 percent of Americans, by far, pay the most in income taxes, forking over nearly 87 percent of all the income tax collected by Uncle Sam.

So it makes total economic sense for people in the bottom 40% to support Sanders – at  least in the short run.


Comments

One response to “Why Sanders call to raise taxes resonates more than when Mondale said it in 1984”

  1. “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money to spend.”
    – the Great Margaret Thatcher

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