Last night I watched the Democratic debate. It is the first debate I have been able to watch this year since I do not have cable.
One of the themes that the Democratic candidates kept stating was that we have an unfair tax system.
What would be a fair tax system? I came up with the idea that people would pay taxes equal percentage-wise to the amount of wealth they have. That seems fair to me. After deciding what fairness in taxation was, I then went and found the numbers to see if our tax system is unfair.
Unfortunately, these numbers just deal with the wealthiest 1%. I do not know where to go to find the wealthiest 5% or 20%.
Economics Policy Institute states: "The wealthiest 1% of households control about 38% of national wealth, while the bottom 80% control only 17%."
To be fair as I defined it above, that would mean that we have an unfair system to the poor if the wealthiest 1% pay less than 38% in taxes. However, the opposite would also be true. We would have an unfair tax system to the wealthiest 1% if they paid more than 38% in taxes.
Here is what I found.
The Wall Street Journal quoted in a National Center for Policy Analysis states: "The top 1% pay 35% of the taxes."
The logical conclusion, if you agreed with my premise of a fair tax system, is that our tax code is unfair to some of the people outside of the wealthiest 1%. I cannot conclude which group is getting the shaft; however, some group is paying more than their fair share of their wealth.
Warren Buffet, the third wealthiest man in the world, said that he thinks our system is unfair because he pays a smaller percentage in taxes than his secretary. Here is the full article on that.
Watch out for the potholes.
