My theory is that the people who complain the loudest pay the least in income taxes (which, of course, is likely statistically true).
The reality is our income taxes are not particularly high, they are progressive and the wealthy indeed pay their fair share – – unless you don’t consider an effective tax rate five times or more than half of American taxpayers fair.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Income and wealth aren’t the same thing. The “wealthy” often pay far less because they have no earned income. They use capital gains to “buy, borrow, die” or otherwise shield their wealth from taxation. Those with high earned income pay higher rates, but that is only a portion of the rich. Also ignores other forms of taxation (sales tax in particular) that tend to affect lower income folks more.
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Everyone can use capital gains, average Americans can save in Roth accounts for tax free income. Lower earners pay low even zero taxes on long term capital gains. Why should anyone pay taxes before income or gain is realized? I buy municipal bonds funds in small amounts and get tax free income, but at lower interest rates. As i have said, there is an overall societal benefit from what many billionaires have created even if they paid no taxes.
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Speak for yourself when you say our taxes are not particularly high. The chart you use says Federal Income Tax and doesn’t say anything about FiCA or the fed gas tax or the accumulated assortment of state tax schemes of sales, income, property et al.
As someone who does live in the double digit income tax world, I do think taxes are high enough and reserve the right to belly ache about them periodically and that right extends to all of us. Have a little heart for the poor schlub making 40 grand a year. He/she doesn’t have much left after paying whatever little tax is required. Let them groan about it if they feel such a need.
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They aren’t. In fact, they are clearly not high enough to support all that Americans want and need.
What that significantly adds to our tax burden would you eliminate? SS, Medicare, Medicaid they are the largest budget items. Teacher compensation at the local level, that represents 50-60% of property taxes. Gasoline taxes, that’s how we maintain roads at both state and federal level and the Federal trust is being depleted. I know, foreign aid- only 1% of federal spending and necessary contrary to MAGA rhetoric. Maybe the trillion spent a year in interest on federal debt? That means a lot less spending or actually paying for what we want which we have not been doing for years, including for SS and Medicare. And no, so-called fraud and waste isn’t significant either.
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I would like to see at the federal level, a breakdown into small bites of all budget activities and results from those activities and then discussion of whether the activity should or should not continue. All I see are colossal lumps of spending and someone saying we need more. Do we need another aircraft carrier to the tune of billions? Do we need another 500 billion annually for the defense budget? There are any number of programs that have gone on for years and nobody justifies their continued existence. I’m in favor of broadly saying we use and need such programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Schip as well as intestate highways etc. But I’m not in favor of spending x amount of dollars and next year and the year after blindly throw an increase after increase at every scheme that comes along.
Simply saying we want and need such and such so therefore pay for it is nonsensical. I like my dollars to have a purpose and I spend accordingly. I suspect you do too. Why then when it comes to taxes and spending, you seem to think too much is never enough?
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How much waste, fraud and abuse does there have to be in order to be “significant”? The estimate for Medicare is $100+ Billion a year. Some estimates have Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse at one in four dollars, 25%!
You need to define “we” more carefully.
The “we” that is most taxpayers employed in the private sector don’t want all of the vote buying Congress prefers. “We” didn’t want the ~$500 Billion a year (2024 estimate) of Health Reform’s new spending to expand taxpayer subsidized coverage in Medicaid and the public exchanges.
“We” aren’t all that excited in the expansion of SNAP from about 17 MM Americans in 2000 to 42+MM Americans in 2024, where we are spending about $150 Billion a year.
But, I agree that even if we dropped/curtailed these and other Congressional vote buying schemes, all we would end up doing is reducing our annual deficit. That is the “we” of 330+MM American citizens are not paying sufficient taxes to offset the “we” preferred level of spending.
Who isn’t paying their fair share? It is the 40+% of Americans who pay no federal taxes on their income. It certainly isn’t the millionaires and billionaires who are the most often scorned and criticized by Bernie/AOC/Mamdani/Pocahontas.
We’ve come a long way baby from a Constitution designed to limit federal powers to an enumerated few!
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And it is caught although it takes too long in many cases. Who commits such fraud? Generally not beneficiaries although under Medicare they are sometimes happy to be complacent if they save money.
That’s why we need more inspectors general rather than firing them and more pre certification of claims which patients don’t want. That $100 billion estimate is Medicare and Medicaid combined out of over $2 trillion – a 5% error rate, some of which is recouped.
Heck, some estimates, including from physicians, say 25% of all healthcare is unnecessary. 😎
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