tax data i'm going to open the taxes are too high or too low can of worms one more time. apparently i like the smell of these particular worms. anywho, here is a paper by a couple of libtard professors at berkeley. they're analyzing who pays what. one of my pet peeves is that the percentile brackets are too small. the irs publishes data in quintiles. ie the 80% are lumped in with the 0.01%. which makes a lot of sense. cause everyone knows the guys who make $80k have the same lifestyle as the guys who make $80m. anywho, pikkety-saez use a more timmer rant friendly breakdown. there are the bottom 4 quintiles. the top quintile is broken into the top 0.01%, the top 0.1%, the top 0.5%, the top 1%, the top 5%, the top 10%, and the next 10%. each bin as i've listed them excludes the bins above them. this makes a whole lot of sense because the income graph is pretty hockey stick shaped. another of my pet peeves is only including income tax. sheehs. the web is full of idiots ranting about income tax being fair or unfair. income tax is some 42% of the government's revenue stream. pikkety-saez use total federal taxes. including social security and medicare. they even assigned corporate and other taxes to individuals based on ownership. clever. timmer approves of this. they also did something novel. the interesting numbers are on page 6, the right most columns. they calculated each bin's share of the income pie before and after total taxes. damn clever. the bottom groups see their share of the income pie grow by 20%. the top groups see theirs shrink by 20%. the crossover point is around 92%. in other words, 88% are paying less than their fair share. 4% are paying just about exactly their fair share. and 8% are paying more. which actually, looks pretty darn good. so maybe the conservicans are right. the rich are paying their fair share. heh. maybe. there are a couple of caveats here. the first is a nit. the pie is adjusted gross income. so it's after deductions. if you add this in, it makes things look slightly better for the rich. there's also no adjustment for living expenses. if this phd thesis were submitted to me, i'd have them calculate shares of disposable income before and after total taxes. this makes things look more than slightly worse for the rich. but not much. another caveat is this data is from 2004. ie before the economic implosions. this hit the bottom incomes way harder than it hit the top. so again another shift against the rich. a 20% swing sounds like a lot. but is truly? the guy who makes $8k gets a hefty lift to $10k. but he's still living in poverty. and the guy who makes $10m gets knocked down to $8m. who the fuck cares? he's still rich beyond most folks ability to dream. so no, 20% really isn't as big as it seems. but still, these are all small potatoes. the big problem is the tax loopholes. which corporations and wealthy individuals use to hide their income. and/or lobby for tax breaks. and/or subsidies. some estimates put lost federal revenue at $1 trillion. yeah that's trillion with a t. enough to balance the fucking budget without raising tax rates. gee, wouldn't that be nice? so yeah, the conservicans are half right. that tax brackets look pretty okay. as long as you don't look to closely at the income that isn't counted. ie the cheating. for lack of a better word. but in my book, half right is entirely wrong. a rocket that gets half way to the moon is a complete and total failure. so hrm. i'm thinking we should talk less about tax rates and more about closing loopholes and ending subsidies that benefit the few who don't need it at the expense of the many who don't need that shit either.  ¶ 8:00 AM