Soak the Rich? They Are Already Soaked

We pointed out a couple of years ago–time flies–that the United States has the most progressive system of personal taxation of any developed country. Now, the Tax Foundation has the same message. The top ten percent of American taxpayers pay more to the national government in taxes, both as a percentage of the total taxes collected and in proportion to their share of the national income, than upper-income taxpayers in any other developed country. This chart says it all:

It is interesting that upper-income Americans pay a much larger share of the freight than those in countries that we think of as well to our left, like Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Belgium. Belgium! Americans still tend to think of our country as a bastion of free-enterprise values, compared to the semi-socialized Europeans. Sadly, that stereotype is, in many important respects, not true.