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50 years ago a man could support his wife and kids. What changed?


Man goes to work, wife looks after home and kids, sometimes 4+ kids, and the man had job security.

Now society is dog eat dog with no job security and all having to work and have smaller families.

Was this planned or just how things worked out due to population growth?

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Why did they have 4+ kids?
were they expecting a couple to die off?

This is why world now overpopulated.
Chinas even ramping up kid production again to look after current crop of eldery.
mistake if you ask me , following that logic its an an unsustainable system that relies on continous growth*
I thought China'd be the first to realise this

*much like the western economies

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It was normal for a few children to die from childhood diseases. Go back a few generations and I bet you'll find ancestors with 10+ children. Birth control for married women was illegal. Activists were thrown in jail for simply trying to educate married women about birth control.

It would make more sense to open up immigration instead of promoting more births.

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THROUGHOUT HISTORY PEOPLE HAV HAD MORE CHILDREN TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL HELP ON THE HOMESTEAD AND/OR BECAUSE OF DISEASES THAT WOULD CLAIM MANY SMALL CHILDREN....THE OP IS OFF BASE WITH HIS 50 YEAR NUMBER.

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The average family size in 1970 was 3.1 people and in 2020 was 2.58 people, so once again you are talking out of your arse to glorify a time that was a lot harder for many people in many ways.

Have you ever considered those women who stayed home to look after the kids might have had hopes and dreams of achieving something that wasn’t available to them and were deeply dissatisfied by the restrictions society placed on them? No, it was better for men back then and that’s what you’re really lamenting. Unless you were a man of colour or a gay man, but who ever thought it was a good idea to give those fuckers more equality, right Intothenight?

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Women were allowed to choose a career instead of marriage already in the late 19th century.

And not all men who were white and straight were happy either.

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Yes, women had to choose between marriage and a career (which was guaranteed to be underrewarded) compared to a man's career, while a man was expected to have both a career and a wife and family.

If married women work frequently now, it's because wages started falling as early as the 1970s or 1980s, and if a family wanted to maintain a "middle-class lifestyle" they needed two salaries. Now, not even two salaries can be enough to pay a mortgage and support kids.

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regulation and safety rules have made things more expensive.

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Things are not more expensive,
mainly due the west's continued legitimisation of slavery by having the 3rd world make all our shit in sweatshops.

When I was a kid buying a washing machine was a big deal , it would last decades , be repaired several times in its life.
Now people chuck the fucking things in landfill because they fancy a different color and buy a new one for $99

when I was 18 an angle grinder was $110 , now they are $15 on ebay

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> 50 years ago a man could support his wife and kids. What changed?

The man got so old and his kids and wife got so big he cannot support them.

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The cost of living was lower vs. high wages because of unions. Inflation made everything more. However consumer culture makes folks buy things they don't need and can't afford. That's the main reason.

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People didn't need as much back then as they seem to do now. Back then you didn't have home computers, internet, cell phones, cable TV. Things were also built to last, now it is usually cheaper to replace something than it is to repair it.

People weren't as obsessed with fashion either. Children would wear hand me down's whereas now you actually have boutique clothing lines for babies and toddlers who will outgrow those clothes in a short amount of time.

People replace their cell phones and TV's etc regularly even though the old ones still work.

Women are in the workplace now too which means more people working which results in less pay or wage increases. Plus not having a parent at home also means paying for child care which can cost more than it's worth.

Then all the other things that have already been mentioned. Outsourcing manufacturing jobs and call centre work etc.

Although now that China has scared the shit out of everyone I think you will see some jobs coming back. Like wanting to make silicon chips for example. Don't be surprised if car manufacturing returns too.

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THE WHOLE POST EXISTS SO YOU CAN DEFTLY STATE THAT WOMEN BELONG AT HOME WITH THE KIDS...DOESN'T IT?

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And? Lol.

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It was planned.

Union jobs were decimated. Those union jobs had higher salaries, pensions, health insurance and job security.

Taxes for the rich went down from 90% to 37%, although the rich really pay only 5% and the middle-class pay a disproportionately high amount.

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Does anything in life EVER stay the same?

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The New Deal helped propel average American salaries, benefits and overall lifestyle upward.

But, the rich and large business owners felt they were being attacked. Starting in the 1970's, they began fighting back. Changes in taxes, legislation, political lobbying, policies and control over various institutions to promote their agenda and viewpoint in the media, law schools, judiciary and universities were implemented.

Excellent historical account is in the book:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Geniuses:_The_Unmaking_of_America

It's unsettling how systemic their plan was.

It sounds like something found only in movie thrillers, but I witnessed most of the changes as they were occurring, especially in legislation and taxes, since they affected me.

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just some clarification on how much is paid:

top 1% of income earners pay 38.5% of federal income taxes.
top 5% of income earners pay 59.1% of federal income taxes.

bottom 50% of income earners - ie everyone at the median or below - pay 3.1% of federal income taxes.

by the numbers in the table in the link below, the top 1% pay a rate of 26.7% federal tax.

of course, this doesn't account for consumption taxes, state taxes, etc.

but top income earners pay way more federal income tax than the bottom 50%.

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2020-update/

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Not true statistics because of the many tax loopholes and the way rich people earn money.

"Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid no income tax in 2007 and 2011. Tesla founder Elon Musk’s income tax bill was zero in 2018. And financier George Soros went three straight years without paying federal income tax, according to a report Tuesday from the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica.

Overall, the richest 25 Americans pay less in tax — an average of 15.8% of adjusted gross income — than many ordinary workers do, once you include taxes for Social Security and Medicare, ProPublica found.

The federal tax code is meant to be progressive — that is, the rich pay a steadily higher tax rate on their income as it rises. And ProPublica found, in fact, that people earning between $2 million and $5 million a year paid an average of 27.5%, the highest of any group of taxpayers.

Above $5 million in income, though, tax rates fell: The top .001% of taxpayers — 1,400 people who reported income above $69 million — paid 23%. And the 25 very richest people paid still less.

The wealthy can reduce their tax bills through the use of charitable donations or by avoiding wage income (which can be taxed at up to 37%) and benefiting instead mainly from investment income (usually taxed at 20%)."

... the wealth of the 25 richest Americans collectively jumped by $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid $13.6 billion in federal income taxes over those years — equal to just 3.4% of the increase in their wealth."
https://apnews.com/article/personal-taxes-business-ab6466a9dcc211907a753ccfb7660959

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yes, but wealth is very different from income.

i'm semi-retired, and earn relatively little income, and pay basically no tax.

but my wealth goes up every year. i don't get taxed on that until i pay my investments out.

regardless, it is simply the case that the wealthy pay almost all the federal income taxes in the us.

yes, they have many write-offs and loopholes available to them, and they have all manner of lawyers & accountants & resources to aid them in doing that.

i don't support that. i think tax systems should be much simpler.

& all that complexity is absolutely great for the rich, and a further tax on the less rich.

but my point remains the same: the bottom 50% of earners pay almost no federal taxes.
the top 1% pay 38.5% of all federal taxes.

& my point was strictly on federal income taxes. no question other forms of taxation would change those numbers.

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" the bottom 50% of earners pay almost no federal taxes. the top 1% pay 38.5% of all federal taxes."

That's not true. Reread the article.

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it is true.

i'm not sure what the disconnect is here, but the facts are quite clear on this, and it's the way things have been for a very long time.

https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-income-tax-rates-and-tax-shares#Early%20Release

you can find this data on the irs site - just download the table under the heading "Number of Returns, Shares of AGI and Total Income Tax, AGI Floor on Percentiles in Current and Constant Dollars, and Average Tax Rates"

it shows for 2018 the top 1% paid 40.08% of federal income taxes.
top 20% of income earners paid 83.26% in 2018.
top 50% paid 97.06%

those are the facts.

yes, it doesn't account for wealth increase. taxing wealth is a very different, and very tricky issue.
yes, investment income is treated differently than employment income. that's treated differently, for reasons that most economists generally support, but you can have a discussion over that.

what isn't in dispute, i'm pretty certain, are those irs figures.

those are facts from the irs.


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Your website is not relevant since that's not what they are actually paying. I know I didn't pay $0 taxes in multiple years like the super wealthy.

There is a difference between perception and reality. Don't get bogged down by the perception.

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it's not my website.

it's the irs!

and the irs supports what i said - that top 1% of income earners pay 40% of federal income taxes collected.

if you think the irs is wrong, then please take it up with them!

that doesn't mean they pay a 40% rate. that's not what i'm saying.

i have no doubt super-wealthy people pay lower rates than people who make $400k/yr in many cases.

but the top 1% paid 40% of all federal income taxes collected in 2018.
the bottom 50% paid 3% of federal income taxes collected.
that's per the irs.
not me.
not my opinion!
if you think that's wrong, then write a letter of complaint to the irs!

if you think investment income and capital gains are taxed too lowly, then that is another matter.
i make no claim to expert knowledge on such things.
from my reading, i think, in the hope of encouraging economic activity and saving for everyone, there are good reasons to not tax those things as heavily.

my own preference is that we would focus more on taxing consumption rather than taxing income.

if we want to encourage industriousness at all class levels and encourage savings, i think by far the best way to do that from tax policy is to forgo taxing income and tax on spending.

my 2c, fwtw.

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You're living in a fantasy world. Perhaps the reality that the rich aren't paying their fair share of taxes is too upsetting for you.

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ok.

i'm not here to fight with anyone. we're clearly not speaking to each other, but rather talking past each other. i don't think that's my fault, but i'll leave it to others to be the final authority on this matter.
i did not pull those numbers out of thin air.
they are from the irs.
they aren't a product of my middle-aged, deteriorating brain.
i gave you a link to the irs page and told you the table title where you could find the stats.

they have been reported in many, many places.

this is on the wiki page for income tax in the us:
"In the United States, a progressive tax system is employed which equates to higher income earners paying a larger percentage of their income in taxes. According to the IRS, the top 1% of income earners for 2008 paid 38% of income tax revenue, while earning 20% of the income reported.[100] The top 5% of income earners paid 59% of the total income tax revenue, while earning 35% of the income reported.[100] The top 10% paid 70%, earning 46% and the top 25% paid 86%, earning 67%. The top 50% paid 97%, earning 87% and leaving the bottom 50% paying 3% of the taxes collected and earning 13% of the income reported.[100]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States

here are some other sites stating the same thing:

https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/who-are-the-rich-and-how-might-we-tax-them-more/

https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxes

what you are arguing, similar to what was in that probublica piece, is that they're still not paying enough.
the propublica piece was rather silly in some ways, in that they used all manner of income and wealth increase to calculate aberrantly low implicit tax rates for those 25 super wealthy people. i think that's pretty deceptive.

at the very least, it implies that they are asking for a radical rehaul of how we tax people. sen warren has made noises like this. some european nations have done it. it's worth noting that many of the nations that did this reversed the policy because - guess what? it leads to weird consequences, it's very difficult to enforce, and it pushes wealthy people to take their ball and go somewhere else.

maybe there is a future in this kind of policy. i don't think so. i don't know how you can say to a guy who has a painting worth a $100million that's in his collection making no money for him and say 'you have to pay a wealth surtax on that.' what if he has no cash? how do you verify value? do you then drive people to deplete their hodings? sell off shares? then you'll harm all the people who hold pension funds, middle class people, whose valuations will be hit.

anyway...

are taxes far too complicated? i think so.
are those complications good for rich people, who have experts they can afford to hire to allow them to take advantage of those laws? almost definitely.

as i said above, i am actually for taxing income, whether employment, investment, whatever, less, at a simple rate with no deductions, and taxing consumption more.

happy posting to you!

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Wow, that was pretty badass!

I would just like to say that if I ever need a lawyer I'm hiring you

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thanks!

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No, thank you!

I've always enjoyed your posts but I had no idea you were a wolverine when it comes to matters of law and taxation...I'm putting you at the top of my contacts list man!

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"we're clearly not speaking to each other, but rather talking past each other."

I agree, therefore I'll try again in order for us to speak the same exact language. I'm not trying to argue with you either, just explaining.

I understand your tax quotes 100% and I'm not disagreeing with them at all. Those are the OFFICIAL tax rates for different income levels.

Now, this is the part where we're disagreeing so hold on tight!

Nobody pays those OFFICIAL tax rates!

Why? Because of the many CREDITS AND DEDUCTIONS written into the tax code which lowers the taxes that are actually paid.

I do my own taxes so I'm familiar with credits and deductions. Like most people, I NEVER pay my income's OFFICIAL tax rate. If you're receiving a tax refund, then you aren't either.

My second point was about those tax credits and deductions. The majority of them are written into the tax code to benefit rich people. There are a few for lower and middle-income people, but the vast number help the rich.

Why? Because the rich donate huge sums of money to legislators to change the tax code in their favor as well as legislators themselves who benefit since most are rich, too.

My link to you pointed to what the rich actually paid instead of the OFFICIAL tax codes.

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ok, we're getting closer but we're not there yet.

the tables i linked to and all the articles i linked to are not telling you what the tax rates are.

they are telling you how much income tax was actually paid.
not the rates.
so when you see 'top 1% of income earners paid 40% of all federal income taxes' in my posts above - that means what that says. that is very precise language.
of all the federal income tax paid in 2018, the top 1% paid 40% of that amount.
if there was a trillion dollars in income tax collected, 400 billion dollars came from the top 1%.
that is what they paid after they took all the deductions and carry-over losses or whatever.
that is what was paid as a final amount to the irs.

that's not a tax rate.
that is how much tax they paid.
direct from the irs.

if someone else wants to come in and help me explain this, feel free to jump in. this is a pretty clear, obvious point i'm making, and i'm frustrated that i'm not getting this through. if someone can do it better than me, please take the reins!

the rest of your post is basically a re-statement of something i said myself several times in this thread.

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"we're getting closer but we're not there yet."
Agreed.

Information appears to be missing.

"top 1% of income earners paid 40% of all federal income"

How much did the top 1% actually earn in realized as well as unrealized income?

How much did the middle-class earn in realized as well as unrealized income? How much did the middle-class pay in income tax (not including any other income group).

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are you now acknowledging that the top 1% did pay 40% of the federal income taxes?

that's all i really want.

i've said, from my very first post to you, that the top 1% pay 38-40% of federal income taxes collected and the bottom 50% pay about 3%.

i've backed up those facts. for some reason, we've had a long and to my way of thinking incredibly boring back and forth where you disputed these things, even though i linked to the irs page showing this and other articles backing up this data.

you said several times that i was giving you tax rates when i clearly was not. i think i was clear. i hope anyone reading my posts with an open mind would understand what i said and if they opened the links would see that the irs backed up the facts i laid out here.

as for unrealized income - that isn't taxable, so it's a distraction to introduce that here.

if you want people to be taxed on unrealized income, then you're entitled to your opinion. i think that's a very bad idea, but i really don't want to belabor this discussion anymore. i've already given my take on why i think trying to tax wealth isn't workable.

regardless, america does not tax unrealized income, so there's no sense in expecting the irs to state that unrealized income on a report of income and income taxes.

by definition, unrealized income is not taxable income.

so it makes no sense to expect things that are not taxable income to be reported on a statement of taxable income.

and i think that's the end of the story.

happy sunday to you anyway.

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I finally found the stats I've been seeking!

Your statistic is distorting the truth because they're incomplete.

Federal income tax is only half the taxes collected by the federal government!

You omitted payroll taxes which make up 1/3 collected by the federal government and paid disproportionately by working and middle-class since only up to $142,000 is taxed:

$50K salary pays 12.4% of total
$50 million salary pays 12.4% of first 142K only. The rest is tax-free.
$50 million from capital gains and dividends pays $0

You omitted other federal taxes: excise, estate and other taxes 8%, and corporate 7%. Add state and local for complete accuracy:

The top 1% who makes an average $2 million income (20.9% total U.S. income) only pays 24.1% in total U.S. taxes. Not 40%.

The middle 20% who makes $41K-66K income (10.9% total U.S. income) pays 9.4% in total U.S. taxes.

Furthermore:
The top 1% pays a total of 33.7% of their income in taxes.

The middle 20% pays a total of 25.2% of their income in taxes.

The bottom 20% who earns less than $23K pays 20% of their income in taxes.
https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2019/

I'm certain the "1% paying 40% U.S. taxes" narrative is being spread over the internet by HNWI trying to convince the middle-class they pay their fair share to prevent any increases. I can smell their BS a mile away.

Yes, you did say specifically federal "income tax". But, it's phrased that way to mislead us peasants.

It's now Monday. Enjoy the rest of the week!

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this is what i said above:

"& my point was strictly on federal income taxes. no question other forms of taxation would change those numbers."

of course that's the case. i took pains to say that i was only referring to income taxes. you can see that i said at least once that i was not including state & consumption and other forms of taxation.

and to that i would again say much as i said with the other things you've brought up: if you want the cap on income removed so that it's taxed up to a million dollars for social security, or $50m or whatever, then that is a different debate. america doesn't do that. it's not a revelation to say that this isn't done now.

any more than it's a revelation to say that we don't tax investment income the way employment income is taxed.

or that unrealized income isn't included in taxable income.

and if we're going to start going into all the other forms of taxation, then you also should start looking into all the transfers that go to people.

once you take transfers into account, the numbers become ever more stark.

for example, according to the cbo, the poorest 20% of households received $68 for every dollar of taxes paid.

https://taxfoundation.org/biden-fiscal-policy/

"In the aggregate, fiscal policy increased the incomes of households in the bottom three quintiles by more than $1 trillion in 2017 and reduced the incomes of households in the highest quintile by more than $1.7 trillion, of which $728 billion came from households in the top 1 percent. Indeed, 2017 was the most progressive year in four decades if judged by how much in inflation-adjusted dollars the fiscal system reduced top incomes and increased low incomes."

now we're really moving outside boundaries, but...that's because you keep moving the goalposts!

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I'm not criticizing you at all so I hope you don't take it that way.

Someone released an incomplete statistic which made it appear that the top 1% are paying much more than their fair share and flooded various websites with it. It likely occurred around the time there was increased support for raising the taxes of the rich.

I believe subconsciously I was looking for the rest of the information because something was missing although I couldn't figure out what in the beginning. Furthermore, I didn't understand why unrelated income levels were being grouped together in your stat.

A stat on only federal income tax is incomplete and misleading. Grouping an upper middle-class person with a poor person is also misleading since it hides the amount that the latter is paying.

Anyway, I see it as part of an agenda to gain public support to keep rich people's taxes frozen. Only in America can a multi-billionaire cry about being too poor to pay taxes and the lower and middle-classes agree with them.

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good article here that lays out the facts quite clearly:

https://reason.com/2021/06/09/propublicas-bombshell-tax-report-that-wasnt/

"It's hard to overstate how nonsensical this comparison is (which is perhaps why it's never been done before). Our tax system rightly does not tax growth in one's wealth until it is realized as income. After all, the alternative is a monstrously complex and unfair system of wealth taxation that developed countries have avoided.

The reason that wealth isn't taxable is fairly straightforward: You aren't directly benefiting from it until it's turned into income (at which point it is taxable). Wealthy Americans may not pay taxes on the growth that their net worth sees, but should they wish to sell assets that have appreciated in value, they would be liable for capital gains taxes on that growth.

And this is hardly some special carve-out for the wealthy. If you own a home, a retirement account, or even a car, it probably appreciated in value over the past year. And yet unless you sold those things and locked in those on-paper gains, you didn't pay taxes on that increase in value.

That doesn't constitute tax evasion; it's just how the code works."

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"Our tax system rightly does not tax growth in one's wealth until it is realized as income. "

Agreed. A wealthy person can afford not to realize most of their income allowing their wealth to grow tax-free while lower and middle-income living paycheck to paycheck are forced to pay taxes.

"they would be liable for capital gains taxes on that growth."

Capital gains is taxed at a lower rate than a salary. A salary is how most lower and middle-income people receive their income.

Most assets don't have to be realized as capital gains. For instance, it can be sheltered into a family trust and just live off the income or give it away as a charitable gift and take a deduction.

Rich do things like receive wealth in the form of options, equity swaps, place money in foreign entities, create trusts, incorporate, create a deferred-compensation plan, etc.

Your link is missing important information. The lowest 25% only make 3.7% income and include the poor who are likely not paying any taxes. I would want to know what middle-class are making and paying.

Buffet has been saying for years that he doesn't have to pay any taxes. That's wrong.

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i don't disagree with any of what you've said here, except for your last sentence, which is kinda a value judgement where i'll probably part company. but there's no need to focus on that. that's an issue of conflicting values, & i just want us to be clear on facts.

capital gains & other forms of investment income are indeed taxed differently, for pretty defensible reasons imo. but as i said, my preferences would be to focus on consumption.

if you look at the irs table i linked to earlier, you can see how much middle class people pay in federal income tax. it's the table "Number of Returns, Shares of AGI and Total Income Tax, AGI Floor on Percentiles in Current and Constant Dollars, and Average Tax Rates."


i believe it shows taxes paid at all levels of income, if i remember correctly. i actually can't look it up right now cuz i don't have office on my home laptop. but it has all the info i referenced earlier.

https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-income-tax-rates-and-tax-shares#Early%20Release

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Realized and unrealized income are missing.

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