Anthony of the Opie and Anthony Show is going on another of his rants about taxes and I love the myopia of it all. He's quoting a statistic that 1% of working New Yorkers pay 43% of all the taxes and he cites this solely as overtaxation.
Now, I'm not going to say that taxes in the state of New York aren't higher than perhaps they need to be. I agree with Opie when he says he wants to know where the money is going because clearly there is much waste going on that is not being addressed. He even said that he would pay more in taxes if he knew it wasn't being wasted. However, waste isn't the sole issue that taxes are so high on the wealthy and it's the one point that he never addresses: the spread between the highest and lowest incomes.
I think, back in the 1960s when the top 1% of this country made about 10% of the nation's income, the pay differences between a CEO and his lowest salaried workers was about 24 to 1 meaning the top earner earned twenty-four times what his lowest paid employees made. Nowadays, when the top 1% earn over 24% of the nation's income, CEOs make over 275 times what their lowest paid workers make (and that number would be even higher if their contracted labor - the cleaning crews - were factored in).
The wealthy pay more in taxes not only because they make more money, but also because they make a lot more money than the people below them. If the income spreads were evened out to be more like the 1960s, the top 1% would still pay more in taxes as a whole number, but less as a percentage...but God forbid they look at that part of the equation.
So...his side and my side...now what's the truth?
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