Recent Comments

1. 27 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Except, of course, that not all earnings are reported to the IRS, as I pointed out, and you have agreed with, but are ignoring, while calling me a liar.

2. 29 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Earners != wage earners.

3. about 1 month ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Fair enough, but the original comment wasn’t about wage earners.

4. about 1 month ago on Pearls Before Swine

   The second and third paragraph’s citations seem to have been edited out by the posting engine? I cited the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and the Tax Foundation, respectively.

5. about 1 month ago on Pearls Before Swine

   I assure you that I was not lying – I honestly believed what I said to be true. However, now that I look for actual figures, I find that there is no agreement among even seemingly nonpartisan sources.

   cites a figure of 25% for the percentage of taxes paid by the top 1% (in 2019), and Investopedia says that they earned 14.6% of all wages (in 2021), while also notes that they tend to earn only a third of their income from wages – much less than people in lower brackets. Of course, that’s splitting across the pandemic, which heavily distorted taxes and income.

   I’m guessing your and Dwight’s numbers come from something closer to , which cites numbers of 26.3% for ‘share of total AGI’ (but I don’t think ‘adjusted’ is what we’re talking about) and 45.8% for ‘share of total income taxes paid’ (for 2021, despite supposedly being a report for 2024).

   And, of course, there’s the problem of whether we’re talking about the top 1% of earners or the top 1% of assets (‘wealth’), which are very different things, especially in an age when the richest of the rich are paid in stock, and thus have no declarable income.

   Anyway, I can’t find anything to directly support either of our claims, but my sense is that the IRS figures don’t really reflect the truth of the matter…and I think Kurtass’ OP is pretty spot on. The richest, who benefit the most from the system, try endlessly to game the system, and often succeed.

6. about 1 month ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Despite earning well more than 40% of all income.

7. 2 months ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   Socialism (in the Marxian sense) is state ownership of the means of production. Regulated capitalism is just capitalism with a few of the sharp edges buffed down.

8. 4 months ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   Weeks of trying to use evidence and logic to convince Trump voters that the reasons they were citing for voting for him were, in fact, reasons to vote against him have shown me that this is true beyond any doubt. They are not making rational decisions at all, they are emotional decisions based on fig leaves of misinformation that allow them to believe what they want.

9. 4 months ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   When was it great before? The Gilded Age? Pre-Civil War? When we still had a king?

10. 4 months ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

    Yes, it’s quite clear that far more people than expected treated this as a sporting event or game in which the objective was to crush the other team. This is what party over country gives you.