While Democrats are duking it out over who can best demonize success to appeal to a perceived voting base that’s more interested in sticking it to those who’ve been monetarily successful in their careers than achieving their financial goals themselves, I figured I’d bring back a dose of reality. Several months ago, I addressed the topic of taxing the rich in a Q&A. Here are points that are especially relevant to Medicare for all.
Based on the most recent available information from the IRS, the top 1% has 37% of all federal income taxes paid, the top 5% has 60% and the top 17%, meaning all who earned $100k or more have paid 80% of all income taxes.
Now, 43% of those earning under $50k don't pay any net federal income tax meaning that the percentage of taxes paid is 5%.
The total earnings of the top 1% equaled $2 trillion last year. The total federal government spend was $4.1 trillion. Forget taxing the rich more, if you confiscated all of the top 1%’s earnings, you still can’t account for half of the government spend prior to offering healthcare to you and all illegal immigrants around the world who will also get a free college education. It’s all a bunch of campaign BS and no, it’s not evenly remotely plausible to tax the rich into the ability to provide for all the “free” promises.
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