The rich pay majority of U.S. income taxes

Luisanatalia Salceda García  

13 de Marzo del 2013

Sociedad y Estado de Estados Unidos

The rich pay majority of U.S. income taxes

retrieved from:     http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/12/news/economy/rich-taxes/index.html

In most societies there are certain broadly shared beliefs about what is socially just and unjust, what is fair and unfair.

The implication of this conflict of values is that the distribution of income and wealth that results from these unjust unequal opportunities would itself be unjust. This, then, strengthens the arguments for redistribution based on the principles of fair shares because under these conditions.

In the following cite of the journal article  :

"Many people think that the rich are able to weasel their way out of taxes, but they actually pay an overwhelming majority of the taxes in the United States " We can identify how wrong are the American citizens perception of the distribution and payment of taxes.  

So we go directly to the point of the book article where  discussing problems of social justice quickly becomes complicated because a diagnosis of injustice really requires two judgments: a moral judgment that an inequality is unfair, and second a sociological judgment that this unfairness could be remedied by a social change.

In a recent article by Steve Hargreaves, it is asserted that the top 10% earners in the United States are those who pay 70% of the taxes gathered by the United States government. It is also compared to the numbers of the 80s, where those who earned the most payed only half of the taxes. 

The news articles goes against the idea of trickle down economics that states that by giving tax breaks to the top earners makes them more likely to earn more. Top earners invest that extra cash in useful economic activities or devote more of their time at the high-paying trade they do best (whether that be creating inventions or performing heart surgeries). Either way, these activities will be productive, reinvigorate economic growth and, in the end, create more tax revenue from these earners and the people they've helped. According to the theory, this improvement in growth will in the end help those in lower income brackets as well. Although trickle-down economics is often associated with the policies of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, the theory dates back to the 1920s.

The general population considers that the rich are increasingly getting more tax breaks to their earnings and that these tax breaks should be given to those individuals who are struggling in the current status of the crisis. However, in reality those with the highest earnings are the ones with the highest tax burden and this might just not be the best thing for a steady and stable recovery of the economy, if we consider the theory mentioned above.