Graphic du jour: "The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes"
"For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower total tax rate — spanning federal, state and local taxes — than any other income group," N.Y. Times op-ed columnist David Leonhardt writes.
The data is from what Leonhardt calls the most important book on government policy that he's read in a long time — "The Triumph of Injustice," by UC Berkeley economics professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, out Oct. 15.
The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay
by Emmanuel Saez (Author, University of California, Berkeley),Gabriel Zucman (Author, University of California, Berkeley)
America’s runaway inequality has an engine: our unjust tax system.
"Even as they became fabulously wealthy, the ultra-rich have had their taxes collapse to levels last seen in the 1920s. Meanwhile, working-class Americans have been asked to pay more. The Triumph of Injusticepresents a forensic investigation into this dramatic transformation, written by two economists who revolutionized the study of inequality. Eschewing
