conservatives are very selective in their analysis of taxes, because if they are not it would be pretty obvious just how narrowly class based their policies are. I will give a few of the obvious examples below.

First when they talk about taxes they are very careful to not draw attention to how much of the total income in the US upper income groups earn and they restrict their analysis exclusively to one and only one tax, the federal income tax and no others. Thus they will argue that the percent of total income taxes paid by upper income groups went up after 1980 entirely ignoring that this occured in large, or entirely, because the percent of income earned by top income groups went way up after 1980.

For example say in 1980 the top two percent earned 40 percent of US income and paid 50 percent tax rates (which they did not but its for ease of example). Thus they would pay 20 percent of the GDP in taxes. The rest of the public earned 60 percent and pay 16 percent rates, they pay 10 percent of GDP in taxes. Then in 2005 at 50 percent tax rate the elites earned 60 percent of total US income. They would pay now 30 percent of gdp in taxes. The public at the same 1/6 would pay about 7 percent. The ratio of money paid by the two groups would be much higher but it would be exclusively because of changes in the percent of the economy earned by elites.

Similarly, consider a 40 percent tax rate for elites at the later period. Now they would pay 24 percent, the rest 7 percent still. The ratio paid by elites is still higher than the earlier ratio but its because their percent of the economy went up again. Not the tax rate changes.

Second income taxes are one of only many taxes paid by the public - they simply are one of the few that are progressive which is why conservatives exclusively focus on them. Federal exise taxes and most state taxes are highly regressive, that is you pay a higher percent of your income as your income goes down. This is one example from the conservative darling, the consumption tax.

I am Joe Rich guy. I earn a million a year (not that much these days for many of the super wealthy). I spend 10 percent of my income on consumption (which is likely high for required consumption expenses). 10 percent of that is taxes. I pay 1 percent of my total income in taxes.

I am Joe Doe. I earn 30 thousand a year. I spend 20 thousand of that on required consumption expenses (things like housing, clothes, food etc that are not discretionary). This is a very low number of what actually would be spent by such an income earner but I do it to give the consumption tax types a decent break. I pay ten percent of that 20k in consumption taxes 2000 dollars. I pay 6.6 percent roughly of my total income in taxes far more than Joe Rich guy.

But the reality is even worse. The real bit from taxes is not on total income but on discretionary income that which you dont need to survive. Joe Rich guy has 900,000 he does not have to spend (even with very generous definitions of that term which assumes he "needs" to have very fancy digs, cars etc compared to others). Only about 1 percent of that is touched by taxes. Joe Doe has 10k in discretionary spending (which is way high for real Americans who need to spend most of their income to get by these days). He pays 20 percent of his discretionary income in taxes. Many state and federal exise taxes are done exactly this way now (as are local taxes).

Somehow conservatives never get around to that type of analysis. Its fasinating how they focus nearly exclusively on taxes that hit high income groups such as income or estate taxes and never get around to discuss the other taxes (which are equally if not more prevalent than income taxes) which have the opposite effect.

Quite a concidence n'est ce pas mes amis?