One of the most tired bromides we hear coming from liberal lips is, “the rich must pay their fair share.” Former President Obama constantly used this expression and also attacked millionaires and billionaires before raising taxes on nearly everyone, in one form or another. Now President Biden is constantly using the same old cliché – “the rich must pay their fair share.” This from a completely corrupt politician who managed to amass many millions for his family by selling access to his office without working a single day in the private sector. Between Biden’s frequent admonitions that people need to pay their fair share of taxes, it recently surfaced that the Bidens may have dodged $500,000 in tax liability by under reporting their own income. And this is without even going into Hunter Biden’s astounding slug slime-trail of corruption and whole sale sell-out to the Chinese Communist Party.
In fact, the so-called rich are already paying far more than their fair share by any reasonable estimate. IRS statistics confirm that the top 1% of wage earners, who control 20% of the national income actually pay 40% of all federal income taxes. So, they are already paying twice what their slice of income would deem to be proportionate. The top 20% of income earning households in the US pay a whomping 88% of all federal income taxes. Understand what this means: the bottom four quintiles of income earners, meaning the bottom 80% of US households, pay a piddling 12% of federal income taxes. The bottom 40%, or two quintiles do not pay any net income taxes at all, but are net takers of government money and benefits. These are the people who need to pay more in taxes – the people who are paying little to no taxes already. Liberals will quibble that the bottom quintiles do pay some taxes, including payroll taxes (if they work legally), sales taxes on their personal consumption and other such taxes. And this is true. But the top quintile generally pays more of all these taxes than the lower quintiles, although the picture is not as skewed as it is in the context of the federal income tax. For example, the top 20% of income earners pay substantially more in state property taxes. Plain fact is that many Americans, as well as millions of recent immigrants and illegal immigrants, are living off of the hard work of the top 20% of income earners. These are the people that need to pay their fair share. The people living like middle class Americans without earning it.
Shockingly, the reality of mounting American indolence is far worse than reflected in the above statistics. Those statistics only cover Americans actually working. The statistics are limited to US households that have declared US income and are paying payroll taxes under the US Social Security Administration system. Illegals (as well as native born Americans) working under the table pay no payroll taxes or income taxes, even if they are wrongly receiving government benefits. Yet, illegals use government welfare benefits to a much greater extent than native born Americans, with approximately 62 % of households led by illegal immigrants using benefits, as opposed to households led by US citizens. US tax payers pay more than $300 billion a year for all the illegal immigrants swarming into the country and living off of the taxpayers. Recent legal immigrants also consume more in government benefits than native born Americans. In the short run then, massive immigration is a bad deal for US taxpayers. But the inequities against hard working taxpayers do not end there.
Of course the millions of people in prison are not paying taxes; we cannot expect any help from them, especially as crime rates sore. One additional factor helps to highlight all of the people who are not paying their fair share. There is actually a number used by economists to reflect the percentage of US residents who are of working age and not in full time school or in prison and who are working or actively looking for work. This is called the labor force participation rate (LFPR). Simplifying a bit, it is a snapshot of the percentage of people who could work that actually are working or actively looking for work. The current LFPR is approximately 61.7%. Understand what this means – it is very important to grasping who is doing their fair share and who is not. In discussing the amount of federal income taxes paid by the top 20% of wage earning households – which was 88% of all federal income taxes – the analysis was limited to households that were actually earning income. It completely ignores all the people who could earn income, and could pay taxes, but are choosing not to do so. This is what the LFPR reveals. With a LFPR of 61.7 % that means that 38.3% of all able bodied Americans who could work, or look for work, are not doing so. Taking all these categories of unemployed and underemployed US residents into account, it is abundantly clear that the people who need to pay their fair share are not the middle class and upper middle class Americans who sometimes work 50 or more hours a week to feed their families, but rather the people who are not working very hard or not working at all. These are the persons who must pay their fair share at long last. Income inequality is natural in a capitalist society; it is a good thing reflecting positive incentives. Smarter, harder working, and more creative people should earn higher incomes than others: this is virtuous, not unfair or exploitive. What we are really suffering from is free time inequality. Too many people get up in the morning and fail to go to work. Instead of hoping for government handouts, which really means their neighbors are paying for them, these people need to get busy, get trained, get a skill, get a profession, and pay their fair share.
By Paul H. Beattie
Notes from the Secular Right 