A statistic quoted at some point above - 60% of the people pay 90% of the taxes. This is, possibly, true.
I content that this is also fair.
This is because the remaining 40% of the people barely make enough to pay rent and eat.
14% of them are currently below the poverty line.
Lets quote some Wiki:
Wikipedia wrote:
In 2007, the "real" (adjusted for inflation) median annual household income rose 1.3% to $50,233.00 according to the Census Bureau.[4] The real median earnings of men who worked full time, year-round climbed between 2006 and 2007, from $43,460 to $45,113 (about 3.6 time minimum wage in 2006 to 3.7 time minimum wage in 2007). For women, the corresponding increase was from $33,437 to $35,102 (2.8 and 2.9 times minimum wage respectively). The median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14) was $26,036 in 2006.[5] In 2006, there were approximately 116,011,000 households in the United States. 1.93% of all households had annual incomes exceeding $250,000.[6] 12.3% fell below the federal poverty threshold[7] and the bottom 20% earned less than $19,178.[8] The aggregate income distribution is highly concentrated towards the top, with the top 6.37% earning roughly one third of all income, and those with upper-middle incomes control a large, though declining, share of the total earned income.[3][9] Income inequality in the United States, which had decreased slowly after World War II until 1970, began to increase in the 1970s until reaching a peak in 2006. It declined a little in 2007.[10] Households in the top quintile, 77% of which had two or more income earners, had incomes exceeding $91,705. Households in the mid quintile, with a mean of approximately one income earner per household had incomes between $36,000 and $57,657. Households in the lowest quintile had incomes less than $19,178 and the majority had no income earner.
Quote:
The aggregate income distribution is highly concentrated towards the top, with the top 6.37% earning roughly one third of all income, and those with upper-middle incomes control a large, though declining, share of the total earned income.
Quote:
the top 6.37% earning roughly one third of all income
And there's your answer.
The top 6.37% earn one third of all income.
Quote:
The top 1% of income earners paid 25% of the total income tax revenue.[38] Again however, the top 1% hold 23.5% of wealth.
Taxes are what you complain about when you can afford everything else you want.
If you're very poor, you complain about the cost of food and rent and bus fares.
If you're lower middle class, you complain about the cost of gas, health insurance, and cell phones.
If you're middle middle class, you complain about the cost of new car insurance, your mortgage payment, and cable subscriptions.
If you're upper middle class, you complain about the cost of college tuition, business class airfare, and lawn maintenance.
Only when you leave the echelons of upper middle class (that mythical $250K+ mark) and enter the earliest definitions of "wealthy" do you run out of other, less expensive things to complain about, so you start complaining about your taxes instead.