On behalf of the lower 99%, I'm sorry the upper 1% paid 41% of individual federal income tax. It really shouldn't be that way. We're also sorry that slow wage growth and income inequality are prime contributors to future Social Security shortfalls.
We've tried working multiple jobs for longer hours and seen the two-income household become standard, but my generation doesn't know what rising wages look like. If we did, we might be able to help out those one per-centers that are paying more than their fair share. I hear that “income inequality has reached levels not before seen in Egypt’s modern history,” but not as bad as here.

Per capita income is down? Too many pie makers or not enough ingredients?
Is this a problem? Robert Schiller:
continued...
I would hope that this would spur public discussion about the structural problem that inequality, economic inequality, has been worsening in the United States and in other countries for 30 years. And it’s gotten really — especially at the high end — it’s gotten really off…This, I think, is potentially the big problem which is bigger than this whole financial crisis. If these trends that we’ve seen for 30 years now in inequality continue for another 30 years, we’re going to look like — it’s going to create resentment and hostility. It’s not a country that — we could turn into a country that even the rich would rather not be in.
We need -- what's beautiful about America is our sense of cooperation, our sense of we're all in this together, we're all citizens of this country. And we don't want an economic system that has a winner-take-all aspect to it.
Hot tip: price of gas is going up.
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Go play with this graphic on
Go play with this graphic on inflation... Plug in your birth year as 2000 and weep...
damn high cost of labor in
damn high cost of labor in this country...
Linkies
Put all the other taxes into the picture, and the rich don't even pay much more - or there's this. Or this.
EITC
I have reviewed tax returns of hundreds of low-income households. The Earned Income Tax Credit is a refundable tax credit that more than offsets the payroll taxes withheld. It was not uncommon to see "refunds" of $3500 on $18000 of income. I remember one household in particular with 4 dependents and 2 parents, each filing as head of household, who got $7000 "back" on a total income of no more than 24K.
Ironically, the few applicants who took their EITC in Advance payments, which boosted their regular monthly income, did not need our program. But paid as a windfall in the form of a "tax refund", the EITC did little to improve the standard of living for the recipients.