CHART: As Services For Main Street Are Gutted, Richest Pay Lowest Taxes In A Generation

[nashville_brook]

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/09/main-street-richest-taxes/

CHART: As Services For Main Street Are Gutted, Richest Pay Lowest Taxes In A Generation

Last night President Obama and congressional negotiators cut a deal to keep the government running, cutting “$38.5 billion under current funding levels, per Republican demands,” and $78 billion below what Obama called for in his initial 2011 budget.

Yet as Republicans and Democrats continue to battle over the deficit within a political framing that includes taking aim at Pell Grants for low-income students — which Obama preemptively proposed to cut, calling summer grants “too expensive,” while Republicans want far deeper cuts than that — Head Start funding, and other programs from Main Street Americans, there is one group of Americans that seems to be getting away without having any sacrifices demanded of them: the very richest.

As this chart from from Wealth for the Common Good shows, the top 400 taxpayers — who have more wealth than half of all Americans combined — are paying lower taxes than they have in a generation, as their tax responsibilities have slowly collapsed since the New Deal era as working families have been asked to pay more and more:

[theaocp]

1. Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs? eom

[QED]

2. Still waiting for trickle down to well, trickle.

[nashville_brook]

7. good question.

[Zephie]

3. K&R. Good find as always

:yourock:

[snagglepuss]

6. I second that. nt

[ixion]

4. Not only are they not paying taxes, they're getting corporate welfare

:grr:

[ladjf]

5. We've got to figure out a way to clamp down on those sons of bitches. nt