OT: Rating the President

[Fian]

OK, I looked at your sources, and they still don't quite make sense.

First, what is your source for the wealthy 5% having 35% of the income? I couldn't find that anywhere.

Second, Rush Limbaugh is quoting 2000 data. The budget link you gave me was for 2002-2008. I also couldn't find in there the 46/10/44 breakdown that you gave me. What is your source for that information?

Even with your numbers I calculated the wealthy 5% paying 31% not 21%. Still not great, but not as bad as you were saying.

Here were my calculations:
Wealthy 5% pays 56% of taxes
Your figures state that is only 46% of total revenue. So 56 * 0.46 = 25.76% of total revenue.
Wealthy 5% presumably pays AT LEAST 5% of the total SSN revenue, presumably more since they would pay all the way up to the 77k amount while the poor be paying less. So of the 44% that SSN contributes to the government income, 2.2% comes from the wealthy. So far we are at the wealthy paying 28% of revenue. I then noticed that you were including corporate taxes for your breakdown. If you strip that out, you find of the people tax, the rich pay 31%.

Oh btw, if there are 128 million households, 5% of that would be 6.4, not 8.