Americans want to Soak the Rich MMCCLXXVII
Robert Waldmann
Jeff Sachs proposed higher taxes on the rich.
Felix Salmon wrote
I don’t think this is possible, politically, in either the US or the UK. In the US, the middle classes are implacably opposed to tax hikes on people making more money than they themselves will ever make.
Kevin Drum agrees with Salmon about US public opinion and asks.
“Why are Americans so unsympathetic to higher taxes on zillionaires?”
The answer is that Americans are sympathetic to higher taxes on the rich, as has been demonstrated by every poll on the question in the past two decades.
Matt Yglesias noted one recent poll which shows majority support for higher taxes on the rich. I just add that I know of no poll in US history which doesn’t show majority support for higher taxes on the rich.
Somehow this absolutely striking, dramatic, undeniable feature of US public opinion has been overlooked. I think the reason is that policy makers and pundits agree that soaking the rich is un-American, and the fact that most citizens disagree must therefore not be conceded.
In the elite debate it is definitely agreed that Americans hate class warfare and are not willing to soak the rich. I firmly believe that this is agreed, because it serves the group interest of the elite. I don’t think Drum, Salmon or many others are influenced by their personal self interest (Drum and Salmon clearly wish things were as they really are). I think the fact that the US public want to raise taxes on the rich isn’t transmitted from pundit to pundit the way the alleged fact that Americans want Obama to show more anger at BP is transmitted, because critical links are broken by people who just hate the fact and won’t accept it.
I add that admitting that Marx had a point makes me feel ill.
Kevin Drum and Felix Salmon ignore not only massive evidence but also my many posts pointing to that massive evidence. My feelings are hurt. Not to boast, but just to boast, I have actually corresponded by e-mail with Drum and by some kind of instant messenger with Salmon.
As I mentioned before the jump, Matthew Yglesias pointed out that their perception of public opinion is totally inconsistent with public opinion. Here’s the link again. The very best fact is that 64 % of polled American adults with annual household income over $250,000 think that “raising income taxes on households making more than $250,000 should … be a main part of any government approach to the deficit”*.
Drum and Salmon’s amazing disconnect from reality is not based on the inflation of the concept of “middle class” which now seems to mean “upper class but not super rich” and goes from the 50th percentile up to the 99th or something. By that definition, most middle class respondents agree with rich respondents that taxes on the rich should be increased (perhaps conditional on there being spending cuts and other tax increases).
*In plain numbers this would seem to be 16 out of 25 rich respondents favor increasing their own taxes. That gives a standard error of the estimate of 9.6% so the two standard deviations interval would be from 44.8 % to 83.2%. This calculation makes no sense with such a tiny sample. The null that 50% or less of the rich support higher taxes on the rich is not rejected at the 5% level, p = 8%. The null that 40% or fewer of the rich support higher taxes on the rich is rejected at the 5% level the p level for the null of 45% is almost exactly 5%.
The rich want to soak the rich.
Admitting that Marx had a point makes you ill?
The top 1%. Who are those? How much do they make?
http://www.mybudget360.com/how-much-does-the-average-american-make-breaking-down-the-us-household-income-numbers/
This is mostly dual earner middle-class jobs (nurse, teacher, office admin, police, local govt type of jobs) families on the coasts. They are already puling their fair share.
The graph at that link above shows the meaning of rich. Look at it.
The top 1% brackets those who earn $250K (about 6 times the median of $46 K median) with those who earn $1.6 million (35 times median)? That is Bill Gates and my family are all the same.
Except that I end up paying more than 50% in taxes (70K Fed, 20-22K state, 17 K payroll) and in childcare (10-20K). Leave alone sales taxes.
In practice, raising taxes on the top 1% is not taxing those who earn that 1.6 million on average. This is taxing two sets of people – double income middle-level workers, and those who are professional wage earners living in cities. Raising taxes on the top 1% will NOT tax anyone except double income families – accountants, teachers, nurses etc who spend almost all thet earn as cost of working – child care, high rents, and high cost of living.
The average income for a tax return in this top 0.1 percent is $7.4 million, while the average amount of income tax paid is $1.6 million, indicating an average effective individual income tax rate of 21.5 percent
It is time educated people stop pushing this “top 1%” and “top 5%” bull. As noted, (1)there is much more disparity of incomes _within_ the top 1%, and tax rates are lower for the top end of that 1%.
It sounds all good in sound bites – tax the rich, the top x%, but practically nothing will be changed by that policy.
Citatations.
http://www.mybudget360.com/how-much-does-the-average-american-make-breaking-down-the-us-household-income-numbers/
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/07in05tr.xls
Avg tax rates (2007) i.e actual returns.
Bucket avg rate AGI floor
Top 0.1% 21.46 (2.155 mil +)
Top 1% 22.45 (0.419 mil +
Top 5% 20.53 (0.160 mil +)
Top 10% 18.79 (0.133 mil+)
What is required is to create much higher taxes on obscene incomes – not just raising taxes on the top 1% or 0.1%
State taxes in CA are even more regressive. Everyone above 47000 pays 9.3% – because when a family makes 43k, they are all as well off as Schwarzneger.
I believe in progressive taxation. That 50% on 250K is close to my family status. Show me why I should pay more, rather than people who pay 20% taxes of 1.6 million on income of 7.5 million. That payroll tax a pittance for them because of the cap? Sales tax? the same.
Naturally, we wont have higher brackets. Most of the senate, media, press and punditry like hiding behind the skirts of double income working families while earning millions.
Well yes. I never expected to admit that he had a clue about anything.
“ I end up paying more than 50% in taxes”
Nobody pays more than 50% in taxes.
We are easily in the top 5% income bracket and we don’t even pay quite 30% in taxes (federal+SS+state+county+city+property+sales).
Anybody who claims they pay over 50% in taxes in the US is lying or stupid.
Dohtax you are arguing that people whose income is in the 99th percentile are middle class. This is crazy. You might consider your income to be pretty ordinary, but if you are in the 99th percentile it isn’t. I mean that’s mostly arithmetic.
You can look at two earner families only. $250,000 will be huge compared to the income of most two earner families. The huge gigantic majority of two earner families have incomes under $250,000 / year. Let’s see. In 2006 44.9 % of married couple families had two earners http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/?chartid=537
The Wikipedia claims that, according to the US census bureau, in 2004 51.35% of households were married couple families.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States
1.5% of households have income over $250,000. If they are all two earner married couple families, then roughly 6% of households are two earner married couple families.
Non family households typically contain two or more families and, in fact, there are more families than households. I won’t bother to look it up, but 6% is being very generous to you.
According to this study (first I found) the highest bicoastal local price indices are about 1.3 times the national average. http://tinyurl.com/3xpexk6
The highest price index was for Honalulu which you didn’t mention.
2.67% of households had income over 200,000 in 2005. 250/1.3 < 200 and that was 2005 so I will grant you up to 3.5 %. Being crazy generous and assuming all households with income over 250,000 live in the very costliest areas and that they are all two earner married couple families and that there are no more families than housholds, I get to that puts a two earner married couple family with income of 250,000 only richer than 86% of two earner married couple families after I correct for the local price level. This is very very far from the average Joe married to the average Jane and both working. If your family income is over $250,000 you might feel normal or middle class but you are rich. If your family income is over $250,000 and you don’t admit that you are rich, then you are a spoiled selfish delusional innumerate who is unwilling to look at the facts and unable to post only once rather than three times.
I think the described moral value of “don’t soak the rich” has become a last stand, line in the sand position of character to counter all the suppressed guilt over the real and factual immoral actions built up over the years. Actions such as torture, war, cheating, disregard for civil liberties in the pursuit of security, rationalization based on self, etc.
Basically, everyone can still feel as if we/they are holding true to the American ideal of justice based on equality with liberty if we just hold the line on not soaking the rich. You can still call yourself an American if you hold that line. The defense mechanism for the guilt of giving up Jefferson and Tom Paine.
I also think, more importantly, it is because though a high percentage of people want to soak the rich, they do not know how to morally justify it in a moral code based equality. That is because the current morally correct equality is based on a child’s idea of one cookie for you and one for me to have one give more than the other is wrong, not right, un..(pick your religion). It is the giving of value based on a concept of moral code. It is morally right or wrong. It is the lesson taught in school and church when young and reenforced every Sunday (or what ever day one’s religion gathers). Unfortunately the mature concept of equality that I would say is lost as a result of the Chicago School of economics simplistic thinking and influence on ideas regarding social order is the one that accounts for the receiving of value. This is not a moral code base equality concept.
Thus, people can acknowledge an act of a person who owns a nail making factory handing out nails in equal parts to the local citizens as equality. They can go beyond and acknowledge as generous the owner handing extra nails to the few who are in need. What they can’t rectify into the current moral code is the inequality of the factory owner getting more use out of the public roads, sewer and water system do to the fact that the owner is receiving a share of the use each of his employes have of such public systems when they show up for work daily. The next level of those who earn money from money receiving even greater multiples of value is as incomprehensible today as is the number one trillion. Just to abstract.
The people can not rectify it because this enlightened lesson regarding a broader understanding of equality beyond 1 cookie each is not being taught, it is not being presented in argument, it is not a lesson that fits the simple moral code and thus simple equality model exemplified in Bush 2’s landing on the deck in a flight suit and which we are still living with in Obama as exemplified by his statement: who’s ass to kick. Childish all the way.
You’re paying 10 to 20K in childcare tax?
As to you at 250k paying a higher percentage of taxes than say Buffet, well, you can thank all those who think equality in economics should always be one cookie for you, one for me and one for Buffet.
Simple minded thinking. It’s why Mass and RI are racing to see who gets the next casino built first.
I did not say “more than 50% in taxes”. Read. I gave the approx math above. Run those with ~260-270K income. Those are close to real nos from last years return. It comes to 46%. I paid that, and have w2 and papers to prove it. My kids go to public school, and go to aftercare were the teachers are — high school kids and college kids. This is not some fancy arts-music private program, plain keep-an-eye-on-them while we work.
Forget 44%. Show me which millionaire is paying 40% taxes. Just 40%. They won’t. They will still pay 20-21%. Raising taxes on top 1% is not going to touch them. It is going to make me pay another 5K.
You just don’t understand the nature of AMT, or the crook in the tax rate curve.
Well,
I don’t believe in soaking the rich. But I would not cry real tears if the top marginal rates were returned to Clinton levels until the deficit caused by the Bush tax cuts is paid for.
I tend to not like arguments based on “fairness,” because two kids with a pie and a knife cannot agree on what fairness means. “I should get the biggest piece because I’m the oldest.”
But if you live in a country that meets your needs… and you do. You ought to be willing to pay to keep those needs being met. And it seems a simple enough idea that those with the most money can afford to pay the most in taxes… not as a simple flat percent, but as a “progressive” increase in percent on the idea that the next dollar is worth less to you than the last, or, alternatively, that a man who has ten dollars a day when groceries cost nine dollars per day is not in the same position as a man who has ten thousand dollars per day when groceries still cost nine dollars per day.
Another way of trying to put this, is that we tend to suffer from percent paresis: somehow if the government takes 50% of my income I am supposed to feel abused, no matter how much the government leaves me to spend all by myself, no matter how much, or little, of that money I could have made on my own without the government services that I am too dumb and greedy to notice.
Or, to put it another way, stupidity and greed are about to bring this great country down into the gutter.
How come it is you can’t talk about raising the taxes of the rich by one or two percent without them howling as though you had cut off their testicles… in fact, they will tell you that if you do that, they will no longer be able to work or produce.
And, just to show that I am fair, how come you can’t talk about raising the payroll tax enough to provide the poor with a secure retirement, without the bleeding heart liberals crying “regressive tax” and “the poor have paid enough.”
What was that he said? Oh, yes, greed and stupidtiy are driving this country into the gutter.
That’s odd. I always had the impression that his theoretical framework was mostly bunk but that he was often a keen observer of unpleasant truths.
I find any assertation that the top 1% in income are middle class hilarious.
It is the kind of statement that really ought to make you pause and realise you are being silly.
Heck, apply your 10-20k in childcare which for some reason you lump in with taxes to the median family and their tax+childcare rate would be like 60%.
However I do think it is possible that some $250k family earners are not quite rich. Those would be the people who live in high cost areas and earn that much only briefly for whatever reason and considerably less for most of their lives.
Free childcare for everyone would be great policy, however.
No I don’t. But those are a necessary cost of us working. We get to deduct 5000 childcare expenses. Without that it would be more. Last year it was 23K.
I did not make that assertion. However I look at myself, and do not see anything above middle class standards for me. I rent my house. I would pay much more if I owned – in property taxes, not deductible under AMT.
I am not eligible for the child tax credit. because our income is too high!!!
>>apply your 10-20k in childcare which for some reason you lump in with taxes to the median family and their tax+childcare rate would be like 60%.
Why would you assume that I want to get more from them?
>>I find any assertation that the top 1% in income are middle class hilarious.
The top 1% income ranges from 250K to billions which of them are you talking about?
http://www.mybudget360.com/how-much-does-the-average-american-make-breaking-down-the-us-household-income-numbers/
I did not make that assertion. However I look at myself, and do not see anything above middle class standards for me. I rent my house. I would pay much more if I owned – in property taxes, not deductible under AMT.
I am not eligible for the child tax credit. because our income is too high!!!
>>apply your 10-20k in childcare which for some reason you lump in with taxes to the median family and their tax+childcare rate would be like 60%.
Why would you assume that I want to get more from them?
>>I find any assertation that the top 1% in income are middle class hilarious.
The top 1% income ranges from 250K to billions which of them are you talking about?
http://www.mybudget360.com/how-much-does-the-average-american-make-breaking-down-the-us-household-income-numbers/
Dohtax, you posted above:
“Except that I end up paying more than 50% in taxes (70K Fed, 20-22K state, 17 K payroll) and in childcare (10-20K). Leave alone sales taxes.”
In response to my quoting you as saying “I end up paying more than 50% in taxes,” you posted “I did not say “more than 50% in taxes”. Read.”
You, Dohtax, are a liar. When you are willing to lie about something so obvious and verifiably wrong, why should we pay attention to anything else you write?
You are a troll. Please go away.
“State taxes in CA are even more regressive. Everyone above 47000 pays 9.3% – because when a family makes 43k, they are all as well off as Schwarzneger. “
Dohtax, You get points from me for this statement!
However, as I look at the tax rate schedule, I see that the “43K” applies to Single or Married Filing Separately (and the top rate for ’09 was 9.55%). Do you file separately? Does Arnold? For “a family” the max rate begins at just under 93K.
Also, the “43K” is “Taxable Income,” which may make no difference to you because you make so much more, but would to someone making closer to the maximum.
All of that said, it *would* make sense if CA reinstated the “10%” and “11%” brackets we used to have, at some point above the current maximum. Of course, as these things go, it might bump you up another bracket.
On the other hand, your child care expenses may be a bit above average,but they aren’t all that high for California. Just imagine someone paying about the same with about 20% of your income, and maybe that will help you to see that you’re doing ok.
Dohtax
it is incredible to me that you manage to feel sorry for yourself at your income level. maybe thinking of childcare as some kind of ‘tax’ that “enables” you to work is a bit of a clue.
please, you won’t understand this, but the brain disease you are suffering from is called greed. back in the old days they called it a “sin” because they understood it led to eternal unhappiness.
Dohtax
you don’t seem to understand that your expenses are a result of choices YOU make. i think you must be a very bad planner, but that is not unusual among people who make more money than they need. They spend it in stupid ways and then complain about taxes.
Robert,
First you need to seperate the “Wealthy” from people with high incomes. Bill Gates could take an income of $1 next year but would still be one of the wealthiest men on the planet.
And I have yet to see anyone who suggests a wealth tax (property taxes are as close as we get in America to a wealth tax and people have almost total control over their property tax). The other wealth tax is the death-tax but I bet if Bill Gates and I died right now, I would end up paying more than he for this tax.
So what you really want to tax is the high-income people. And you define high-income as over $250K. This covers everything from two-income families, to Oprah, to that starving artist who finally sold a book, to the NFL lineman who needs to cash in as best he can during his expeted 3-year career. Your going after people who want to BECOME wealthy.
Good luck with a wealth tax. As for soaking the high-incomes. Great, just make it harder to turn over the elite.
Dohtax,
First, you decided to live somewhere where you need to shell out $23K for childcare. Your choice so this is descretionary spending. So is your state taxes. So right there you can save north of $40K by making better choices if money is what concerns you. And I bet you in a high cost of living area. That is all your choice. If your income is over $250K your in the high-income group. Live with it.
Lastly, where did you get the 1.3 difference between the highest and lowest COL areas? I moved from Fairfax County VA (DC suberb) to the DFW metroplex in Texas. My cost-of-living dropped dramtically more than a 1.3 ratio. I would say it was closer to 1.5-1.7 between those two and neither are at the ends of the spectrum. I’ll give you Hawaii, but I would put NYC and SF up there. But where you live is purely a personel choice. So deal with it.
Islam will change
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SENTENCE IS NOT GOING WHERE IT AT FIRST SEEMS TO BE GOING. In 2007, 180,000 Wall Street gamblers earned average $180,000 bonuses on top of their average $120,000 salaries: average $300,000 — but even they are not the beneficiaries of the maldistribution of income in America’s upside down labor market.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/04/news/companies/wall_street_bonuses/index.htm
2006, average household income: $1,200,000. (Two 18s followed by two 12s: easy to remember.)
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2789
Since 1973, 15% of income has shifted from the bottom 90% of earners to the top 3% — apparently largely to the top fraction of 1%. Taxing that money back (not the most fundamentally sound way of returning it to the 90%) is nothing to do with class warfare which Americans healthily don’t approve.
It is about time somebody told Americans what the hell is happening to them — which happening has no healthy economic rationale (paying CEOs literally 25X what they used to make sends more kids to grad school to become better CEOs — ditto for ballplayers and news anchors? :-]). We could start by informing Americans that the federal minimum wage is now 75 cents an hour below what it was in 1956 (adjusted for inflation) — and that doubling the minimum wage would seriously raise the price almost nothing even in the poorest parts of the country except the price of fast food (by 1/3 — but the low income goes to fast food so doubling their income shouldn’t even hurt that business :-]).
Joel-
“More than 50% in taxes and child care” <> “More than 50% in taxes”
Learn to read and learn logic.
Indeed soak the rich! After all they are and have been soaking the rest of us for generations!
I think peole are overlooking the positive deterrent to white collar crime, social decline, and racketeering that a progressive tax might have on the uber-wealthy.
Jesse is right. A progressive tax would go a long way to preventing white collar financial shenannigans.
And those polls done over the past 20 years showing that Americans don’t want to tax the rich? Somehow they all forgot to ask me. Tax the hell out of the rich. And make corporations pay their fair share too.
It seems that there are two nearly identical conversations taking place on adjacent threads. This is a copy of my $.035 from the other thread. I’m sure you’re all intrerested.
Dohtax makes a very valid point. The term rich is insufficient to use as a basis for making decisions in regards to tax equity. Where is the bulk of the wealth and who earns the grossly outsized incomes which are resulting in a continuous soaking up of all available income. Income has to include all forms whether the result pof labor or investment. And taxation has to recognize the disproportionate distribution of that total income. Taxation also needs to take into recognize those sectors of income which are receiving the greatest benefit from our economic structure, and recignize their obligation to support that system in line with that greater benefit.
I don’t know the exact numbers, but I recall that a majority of Senators and a great many Representatives fit the category of very wealthy. That being the case how can we expect that they will look beyond their personal self interest. How do we expect that those very wealthy elected representatives will understand the issue of fairness? How can we expect that they will take steps to adjust the tax codes in a more progressive manner? Don’t hold your breath. From the NY Times just this AM, a story of what our representatives can accomplish when they put their minds to it,and party politics has nothing to do with the results.
“Legacy for One Billionaire: Death, but No Taxes”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/business/09estate.html?ref=todayspaper
Childcare is a choice about care after a choice about family size. All on you. If you need to toss in kid costs to get you above 50%, you aren’t above 50%. I don’t care whether you have kids, or how you choose to care for them. I do care that, if you have kids, they have public education available, because I want to live in a democracy in which voters have a shot at knowing how to read and do math. I do care that you enjoy safe borders, because I have the same borders. There is no particular reason that you should lump the cost of choices you have made privately in with the cost of maintaining the state. No 50% for you, unless you allow that I get to lump the cost of the personal choice of my choice into my tax bill. I think I’ll pick health insurance. No, elective cosmetic surgery. Wait…housing costs. I want taxes and housing costs to be the numerator in my tax share calculation.
Indeed, tax incomes falling two standard deviations above the median at 90%. If you’re in that group, you’ve already won the game. How about letting some others the opportunity to play?
If raising taxes on the top 1% means you wil pay $5k more in taxes. then I’m for it. I don’t say that because of the “I got mine, so f##k off attitude. I don’t say it because you created a made-up category of taxes-plus-child-care. It’s just that, if you earn in the top 1% and a tax hike is on the table that would take just $5k from you, that doesn’t seem onerous. We have a big, stinkin’ fiscal gap to fill. If people in the lucky end of incomes can’t be tapped for $5k, then we can’t close the gap. If this is a fairy-dust world in which deficits really don’t matter, then we should immediately stop collecting FICA. If it isn’t a fairy-dust world, you should pay more taxes. People at the bottom should not.
We have a wealth tax that’s imposed after death, rather than repeatedly, every year. Lots of people think it should be higher than it was before it was temporarily cut forever, but the debate is still focused on whether temporary or for ever is the part of temporarily cut forever that is binding. Lots of people want more wealth taxes.
Mattj
i’ll give you the “read” (tho it’s a bit unfair to expect a person to parse the punctuation that closesly)
but not the “logic.” one has to ask why the hell Dohtax included child care in his discussion of taxes and juxtaposed them so closely to taxes that it takes a mangifying glass to “read” the distinction.
Coberly,
“…a man who has ten dollars a day when groceries cost nine dollars per day is not in the same position as a man who has ten thousand dollars per day when groceries still cost nine dollars per day.
Another way of trying to put this, is that we tend to suffer from percent paresis: somehow if the government takes 50% of my income I am supposed to feel abused, no matter how much the government leaves me to spend all by myself, no matter how much, or little, of that money I could have made on my own without the government services that I am too dumb and greedy to notice.”
Over the years I have tried various examples and strategies to make this point. The only people who seem to understand immediately (and regardless of education) are those who have experienced, personally or vicariously, living on an income that barely covers basic necessities at a basic level. In fact a 5% tax on those who earn just enough to cover basic shelter, food, and transportation needs (you’ll note I didn’t include health care) is more onerous than a 35% tax on someone who has a large surplus of income after covering those needs at a far more comfortable level.
The fact that this is so hard to get across is one of the reasons I agree with your conclusion.
Harper
I don’t know about Marx, but i’ll take this opportunity to suggest that the “theoretical framework” of free market ideology has been shown to not work, despite the special pleading case by every damn case.
i’d suggest that sane observers would conclude that a “mostly” free market approach to markets, with a healthy dose of government regulation and (gasp) social engineering, is the best we can do.
i hasten to add that my concept of social engineering is rather more laissez faire than what most people think they mean by it.
thanks linda.
you don’t want to get into the business of trying to get hard stuff across to people. easier to sell them a sure thing on wall street.
tag
i agree with your point, but the way i understand your point is that all those rich people who say thy won’t work if their taxes are raised should have their bluff called. there are plenty of people who’d be glad to take over the work they do, and would do it just as well.
i wouldn’t push the “tax the rich” philosophy too far. those people think they earned their money and some of them actually did. there is probably a place where they would start to feel sorry for themselves and cheat on their taxes or move to grenada. might be better to appeal to their patriotism and common sense and ask them to pay a slightly higher tax for the duration of the emergency… in this case the deficits caused by the tax cuts they got when they promised to grow the economy.
Uh, wrong.
“Rich” should always and everywhere refer to _assets_, not income.
Focussing on income just benefits the truly filthy rich, who pay far far less in taxes then your “rich,” because those of us who work for a living (even if we have housenold income north of $250K) have a relatively large income to assets ratio.
On Marx having a point:
To understand how someone with a $250k income can consider themselves not rich with a straight face you need to conceptualize “middle class” not in terms of a percentage point on the income distribution but in terms of relationship to the means of production.
The really rich own or control the means of production. The middle class work for salaries, wages or service compensation, but are comparatively well off. The working class works for wages and is not well off.
Two-family households with incomes of $250,000 not only work for wages, with no significant capital income, but are often in a position such that the loss of one of the jobs is a disaster because of high fixed expenses, typically undertaken to get their children good educations. Elizabeth Warren (on of my heroines) is very good on this.
I speak without prejudice; I’m nowhere close to that income, and I favor higher taxes on that income category and really higher taxes on the top .1-.5%.
“I just add that I know of no poll in US history which doesn’t show majority support for higher taxes on the rich.
“Somehow this absolutely striking, dramatic, undeniable feature of US public opinion has been overlooked.”
It hasn’t been overlooked. People have simply lied. 🙁
It is called the bandwagon effect. If people think that “everybody” is doing or thinking something, they become more inclined to do or think that. It’s OK. It’s not only OK, it has the seal of approval.
So tell people that polls show that people believe what you want them to believe. If you have to lie to do so, so be it.
“Kevin Drum agrees with Salmon about US public opinion and asks.
“Why are Americans so unsympathetic to higher taxes on zillionaires?”
And this tactic, including the statement as a presupposition to a question, is even more effective. How do you say that a question is lying? To entertain the question you have to accept the presupposition.