Letter to the editor: Our tax system is not fair

Tribune-Review | Tuesday, November 19, 2024 7:00 a.m.

Paul Kengor’s column “Trump’s tax cuts for fat-cat billionaires?” (Oct. 24, TribLive) did not give us the whole picture. He states that the bottom 50% of income earners in America pay only 2.3% of federal income tax. But he fails to mention that nearly 50% of full-time workers do not make a living wage.

Think of that, in one of the richest nations in the world, 50% of its workers struggle to pay their bills. The bottom 50% has only 3% of the wealth distribution. Compare that to the top 10%. This group has 67% of the wealth distribution, only 10% has more than one half of all wealth. The top 1% has 30% of all wealth. The top 1% has 10 times the wealth of the whole bottom 50% of workers. A rough calculation shows that an average person in the top 1% has 500 times the wealth as an average person in the bottom 50%.

Then look at taxes. The wealthiest 400 billionaire families paid on average a federal tax rate of just 8.2%. The 25 richest Americans pay a true tax rate of only 3.4%. Meanwhile, the average American has a 13% tax rate. Some years, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg paid no federal income tax at all.

America has the greatest poverty rate of any developed nation. Regardless of race, religion or political affiliation, we should all come together to demand a fair and just wage and tax schedule.

Sandy Kremer

Youngwood