Those who buy into President Obama’s notion that the federal government ought to do more to “tax the rich” ought to consider the following excerpt from Graeme Wood’s latest National Review cover story.
[T]he common conception of millionaires, on whom so much of the nation’s long-term fiscal viability depends, is largely a caricature. An accurate snapshot of this group — whether one understands it to include those who have $1 million or more in assets or those who make $1 million or more per year — shows that it is enviable, to be sure, but also that it pays a hefty share of the government’s bills. In 2007, a peak year for America’s high earners, the top 1 percent of households earned 19 percent of all income and paid 27 percent of all federal taxes, including payroll, corporate, excise, and income taxes.
Millionaires are also a surprisingly broad group of Americans, not just an uber-wealthy group of idle rich. Among the millionaires-by-wealth, those whose net worth exceeds $1 million, the majority are working people, and not exclusively in professions that involve stethoscopes or compulsory neckties. Even the millionaires-by-earnings are a group that exhibits many qualities widely regarded as desirable: relatively fluid membership, entrepreneurial spirit, and increasing diversity of national origin as well as race. We might acknowledge the virtues of the millionaire class, even as we prepare to open its veins.
