Talking about Tax Progressivity (part 2)

Whether you soldiered through the technical stuff in part 1 or not, welcome to the fun part.[1]

In our first graph, we use the data to look at just the payroll and income taxes, that is, the taxes that can be directly attributable to households.  That the data is presented below[2]

Talking about Tax Progressivity (Part 1)

This is a heavily technical post.  If you don't like heavily technical posts, just remember the picture below and skip to Part 2.

Over the next few posts (it’s going to take a few), we are going to take apart this chart.[1]

We’re going to do this for two reasons.  First, to make a point that I firmly believe having wandered the world of political websites, namely that you can find someone on some website to say what you believe and maybe even draw such a graph; however, to understand what’s going on, you need to dig into the numbers and dig hard.  Second, if you wander the world of political discussions, you invariably get into a discussion about the progressivity of the tax code and, when arguing with someone on the left, you invariably get a version of the chart above because, to a leftist, it says exactly what you want it to say…that is, see how much less the “rich” are taxed today (2004) than they were in the past.