GOOGLE RON PAUL

Even if the wealthy HAVE paid the majority of income taxes in terms of gross numbers, that still doesn't change the fact that they pay a lot less of their total income out to Uncle Sam.

Let me put it this way: The lower and middle classes pay a far, far higher opportunity cost than the wealthy in taxes, simply because the wealthy generally spend a far lesser amount of their total income. What they don't spend accrues interest (and in several cases, the interest from that wealth is what the person lives off of, not the wealth itself), and generally sits there doing nothing. Compare this to you or me. I make around 800 dollars a month working part-time delivering pizza (minimum wage plus tips and commission). Of that, 4-500 is immediately set aside for monthly expenses, most of it being gas due to my job. I'd say that's about $250 dollars a month (60 dollars a week, filling up the gas twice; and I drive a Honda Civic, which is fairly fuel efficient. Imagine if I drove a minivan or SUV). The rest of that 4-500 dollars is set aside as discretionary spending, and the remaining 300 dollars is deposited into savings (usually to be spent a few months later on books and tuition).

In other words, easily 95% of my income is eventually spent, compared to roughly 3-4% for your millionaire type (who, by the way, is also able to afford luxuries I could never dream of owning).

Basically, a fair tax places a much, much higher burden upon the lower/middle class (which already has trouble) than it does the wealthy.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

The top tax rate is 35 percent (for anything over 350k). A married couple that makes 48,201 (the median income in 2006) pays at the 25 percent rate.

Let me rephrase that: under the Fair Tax, the lower/middle class would have a much higher burden of tax than the wealthy would.

There's nowhere I can't reach.