Joe Lieberman is talking on TV today about taxes, among other things. One comment he made, which always really bugs me was something about taking back the tax break that was given to the richest people. I suspect that we'll hear a lot of democrats slamming Bush for giving a tax break to the people with the highest incomes, but I doubt that any of them will make even the smallest mention in passing what the tax situation was before.

It is impossible to determine whether a particular tax break or tax increase was fair without knowing where we were before.

Maybe the old tax structure put too heavy a burden on the rich--and maybe not--the point is, if we want to discuss fair distribution of the tax burden, the way to do it is to decide what would be a fair distribution and implement that. Whether that change reduces taxes for the rich of the poor then only reflects in what way the system was unfair before.

So, some facts (I don't have the most up-to-date numbers--these are from 1996 (see http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/indincdi.pdf), but I can't imagine that the general gist of the figures will have changed, even if the specifics are somewhat different):

1) The people in the top 99th income percentile (i.e. the top 1%--we'll call them the uber-rich) paid roughly as many dollars in taxes as the people in the 90th to 98th percentile ("the rich"), who paid roughly as many dollars (more, actually) as the people in the 50th to 89th percentiles ("the middle class"--maybe not how this term is normally used, but I'll use it here for clarity), and each of those groups paid about 5 to 6 times more dollars than those in the 0th to 49th percentiles ("the lower class"--I'm in this group, by the way). In other words, the uber-rich paid an average of 9 times as much as the rich, the rich paid an average of 4 times as much as the middle class, the uber-rich paid 36 times as much as the middle class, and 300 times as much as the lower class. In raw dollars, the rich apparently aren't finding enough loopholes to get them out of paying the lion's share of total taxes.

2) The uber-rich paid about 27% of their income in taxes, the rich, 17%, the middle class, 11% and the lower class, 4%.

While I would agree that it's appropriate for the rich to pay a higher tax rate, it would be as easy to argue that the rich deserve a tax break as to argue that they need to pay more. The issue will never be resolved by complaining that the rich got a tax break, but only by deciding what this distribution should be and implementing it. And I for one find it a bit offensive when politicians try to buy the votes of the masses by promising them tax advantages using rhetoric that ignores the heart of the issue. It makes me wonder what other issues they're giving a one-sided presentation of to try to buy my vote.

I should end by mentioning that in many ways I like Lieberman. But not in every way, and not on this issue.