"I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief,"

"At a time of war, at a time of economic stagnation, at a time of rising national debt ... one might expect our national leaders to pursue policies calling for shared sacrifice to achieve shared benefits. Regrettably, that is not the case."

The way to beat McCain is to use his own words against him. Including the admission that he doesn't really understand economics - although that would be redundant. Ask him just what it took to make him change his mind, why are policies that were so reprehensible just a few years ago now acceptable. Push him, make him explain his about-face. Ask him why it isn't a flip-flop when he does it.

What amazes me most is that Americans that can't afford to pay for the gas in their aging car to drive to a job that may soon be gone and doesn't offer any decent healthcare benefits then pick their kids up from a substandard school staffed by underpaid teachers and drive to a grocery store to buy food that they can barely afford and then head home to their house that is about to be foreclosed on will still vote for someone that will cut taxes for the rich.

And they'll do it with a patriotic smile on their face hating the other guy that doesn't wear a flag pin.

Amazing!

Mr. Jouvenal's article is selective in its facts concerning the tax burden in the United States. For example, he states that the top 1% received 33% of the benefits from the Bush tax cuts. No doubt this is true. But he fails to point out that in 2005 (http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=129270,00.html, Table 5 and 6), according to IRS data, the top 1% paid 39.38% of personal income taxes while the bottom 50% paid 3.07% of total personal income taxes. Since the top 1% pay such a large portion of personal income taxes, they will inevitably receive the majority of the benefits of any tax cut. In fact, between 2000 and 2005, IRS data show that the share of personal income taxes paid by the top 1% increased from 37.42% to 39.38%. Even after Bush's tax cuts, the top 1% actually paid a larger portion of the total personal income tax liability. True, the average tax rate for the top 1% dropped from 27.45% to 23.13% between 2000 and 2005, but the average tax rate for the bottom 50% fell from 4.60% to 2.98%. Meanwhile, shares of adjusted gross income for the top 1% and bottom 50% remained virtually unchanged between 2000 and 2005. It is easy to select a few figures and make one tax plan look bad or good relative to the other, but some attempt at bringing out additional data to give proper context to numbers that are provided would be appreciated by Mr. Juvenal and other writers.

Similarly, in looking at the data on the family earning $66,000 vs. the family earning $606,000, the contrast is stark. The McCain plan would reduce the middle-class family's tax burden by 0.5% of total income, the Obama plan by 1.5% for a family that paid an average of 15.86% of their income in pesonal taxes. By contrast, the family making $606,000 would see their taxes fall by 7.4% of total income under McCain, and rise by 19.2% under Obama. Since the top 1% paid about 23.13% of their income in personal income taxes in 2005, this would almost double their personal tax burden. Again, context would be welcome.

What is rarely addressed in articles like this is how the burden of the personal income tax has been increasingly shifted to the top earners. Between 1986 and 2005, the share of taxes paid by the bottom 50% fell from 6.46% to 3.07% (income share fell from 16.66% to 12.83%), the bottom 75% from 23.98% to 14.01% (income share from 40.98% to 32.48%), the bottom 90% from 45.31% to 29.70% (income share from 64.88% to 53.56%) while the tax share of the top 1% rose from 25.75% to 39.38% (income share from 11.3% to 21.2%). Of course, to get the full picture, the impact of payroll taxes and sales taxes would need to be taken into consideration, but the trend would still show that an ever larger burden of taxes is being shifted onto the top earners.

Should this trend be continued? When asked why he would raise taxes on the rich despite the evidence that it could reduce growth or tax revenue, Obama replied that he was doing it because it was fair. Of course, fairness is subjective.

The question I would like Mr. Juvenal or Obama to answer is what would be an unfair tax burden on the top 1% or the top 5% or the top 10%? Would paying 50% of their total income in taxes be unfair? 75%? 100%?

Or cynically, can a candidate such as Obama, decide that most earners in the top 1% won't vote for Obama anyway, so why not promise the remaining 99% you won't raise their taxes and dump the tax burden on the top 1%?

Since the 1986 tax reform, the trend has been to push a larger portion of the tax burden on the top income earners, but at what point does this become unfair? Back in the 1950s, the top marginal tax rate in the US was 93%, though the government promised never to take more than 89% of someone's total income. Is that where we are headed? Or would fairness demand an even higher tax rate?

Hey Globalcon, you can save your energy.

Poor Americans aren't going to rise up against the rich. Taxes for the rich will go down and the burden will shift even further to the poor.

The poor wouldn't have it any other way.

Globalecon asks:

"The question I would like Mr. Juvenal or Obama to answer is what would be an unfair tax burden on the top 1% or the top 5% or the top 10%? Would paying 50% of their total income in taxes be unfair? 75%? 100%?"

Please supply your own answer to this question. Please also specify who has suggested that the top 1 percent pay 75@ or 100@ of their total income in taxes.

Progressive taxes are in place in most industrial democracies. Extremely wealthy persons pay little or no taxes in societies like Russia and Mexico. Is the model the U.S. should emulate?

The extremely wealthy have done extremely well under the Bush administration. The budget is in deficit, infrastructure is deteriorating, and public services including particularly health care for the non rich continue to decline. Globalecon, please specifically say why a moderate increase in taxes on the top 5%/1% are unfair and inadvisable instead of posing general rhetorical questions.