:shrug: if you wish to say so, that is fine. the fact remains his post left that as a fully legitimate reply.
you know how we always talk about how pols have lost control when they start complaining about the questions they receive, when the narrative becomes the story-about-the-story? yeah, here.
their income has indeed gone up at a faster rate than others - which is the trend as societies advance. however, this has occurred even as we have altered our tax code to lift the burden from the middle class and place more of it on our higher earners. the "their income has advanced" argument would imply a 1-to-1 growth result. For example: "The top 10% used to make 25% of the income and pay 25% of the tax burden, now they make 45% of the income and pay 45% of the tax burden. As their income grows, so does their portion of the tax bill." But that is not what has happened. Their share of the national tax burden has accelerated
much faster than their share of the national income. The top 1% of Americans now pay more in taxes than the bottom 95%:
As you can see, the top 1% are paying 40.5% of the tax burden... but they are only doing it on around
22.5% of the national
income.
ergo, it is
not a one-to-one growth ratio that we would see were the only factor that of increasing top incomes. the fact that we have deliberately shifted much of our tax burden off of our middle class and onto the wealthy
accelerates that trend and is responsible for the disparity in comparative rates of growth.
So, in the context of the discussion of our "shortfall" (ref: OP), our problem is not that we don't tax the rich - it's that we seek to avoid taxing the (voting) middle class, while still giving them lots of goodies.
now, in a discussion of
revenue; we have some historical constants. Observe what happens to tax revenue as tax
rates jump around wildly:
Tax Revenue seems to come in relatively independent of tax rates - usually at around an average of 19% of GDP. We saw a slight
increase in collections after multiple tax
cuts:
...but not enough to really push us too far out of bounds of that historical average of around 19%.
what DID finally push us out of that historical average was a massive increase in the size of
Government. Government does not tax itself quite as enthusiastically as it taxes labor, investment, and production - and so as Government
rises as a percent of GDP, tax revenues
fall as a percentage of GDP. So, in the last couple of years, we have seen Government increase from about 20 to about 24.5% of GDP , and we have seen Revenue
fall from about 19 to about 15.5% of GDP.
SO, when discussing the need to get revenues to match expenditures, it becomes evident that:
1. Rates do not powerfully directly effect revenue - GDP and the relative size of Government do.
2. If you want to increase revenues, therefore, you have to increase GDP
3. If you want to increase revenues as a percent of GDP, you have to reduce the size of government relative to GDP.
4. Rates do not seem to have a powerful direct effect on revenue - but they do on growth. Raising rates is thus more likely to reduce growth, thereby reducing revenue off of what you would have otherwise collected.
If you want to get revenues to match expenditures, therefore, you have to grow GDP and reduce government relative to it. Raising tax rates is more likely to be counterproductive than it is neutral, and is exceedingly unlikely to move those two lines closer together.