Zombie Ideas: Only The Rich Pay Taxes

Posted by Mark Price on April 25, 2011 9:41 am
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A big part of our work is fighting zombie ideas — claims that don't actually have empirical support but just keep getting repeated over and over again.  On Friday and again this morning, Paul Krugman let loose his wicked cricket bat on one we hear repeated ad nauseam by Harrisburg pundits.

The claim that only rich people pay taxes is a zombie lie — something that keeps coming back no matter how many times it’s killed by evidence.

Krugman points us to analysis of all federal taxes as well as state and local taxes (PDF), which illustrates pretty clearly that the taxes paid by each income group is similar to their shares of total income.

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