Skin in the game: top 20 percent of wage-earners paid about 95 percent of all income taxes

Fairness:

The [accompanying] chart ... is based on data in the recently-released CBO report "Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2008 and 2009," [PDF] showing the share of federal income taxes paid by income group in 2009.  In 2009, almost all (94.1%) federal income taxes collected were paid by just one-fifth of Americans (top quintile) and the top 1% paid almost 39% of all taxes collected.  In contrast, the lowest and second quintiles were net "tax collectors" because that 40% of Americans received more in refundable tax credits than they paid in income taxes.

But all we hear about is how the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes, and proposals for increasing taxes on "the rich," like the one from Warren Buffett discussed here

Joe Biden calls this having "skin in the game".

"We see a system where everybody pays their fair share. Where the middle-class tax cut is maintained, and where no one making a million dollars a year or more pays a lower percentage in income than middle-class and working-class families. Where everyone, and I mean everyone, has skin in the game and no one gets played for a sucker.

Skin in the game? Yes, I agree with that. What about the bottom 60 percent putting some skin in the game?

No one gets played for a sucker? Yes, I agree with that. How about taxpayers recoup the billions Obama sent to his campaign bundlers for their phony "green companies"?

What Biden said actually makes sense, though not in the way he'd intended.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com/Money.