opinion

Thank you for this much needed reality check! It does ask one to ignore the obvious 35% the rich pays on the their ALL of their higher income, and accept the belief a poor person will pay enough in sales and gas tax to overcome this differential. Riiiight...... One must also dismiss the "rebates" the tax code gives to low income or highly fertile people.......ie believe junk statistics. Kind of like some other "science" statistics these people take hook, line, and sinker........

Factor in tax attorneys and lawyers and the numbers will show they pay far less a percentage. I trust Warren Buffet far more when he says he pays a far lower percentage than his secretary than this lackey.

This is laughable. The tax rate paid by actual capitalist rich is 15.0%. And it can be deferred to quite a lot lower than that. In many cases, for billionaires and 100m-aires, the tax is below 10% on income and 0% on wealth. Class dismissed.

"They cherry pick data and ignore all federal taxes paid by Minnesotans, poor and rich alike. They ignore the 20 percent of Minnesota spending funded by federal tax dollars, the state and local tax payments by Minnesotans to other states, and the Minnesota state and local taxes paid by nonresidents." And when Republicans state that 50% of American households don't pay income tax, they ignore all sales taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, sin taxes and other fees that are paid by everybody. So the myth-making is a two-way street.

If this is fact, why is it in the opinion section?

What a bunch of nonsense. Really, Strib, you should have some minimum standards of accuracy even for things you publish on your opinion page.

This commentary ignores the much lower tax rates on investment income, which is the majority of income for many rich folks. It's interesting how it's primarily the poor right wingers who are most adamantly opposed to progressive taxation. I was that way too, before I started making a good living and realized that slightly higher taxes might mean I have to buy a slightly less expensive bottle of wine, whereas lower taxes might mean some mentally ill person doesn't get treatment and suffers.. homeless..potentially a risk to others. Taxation shouldn't be viewed as theft, but rather the mature person should view it as a contribution to the society that makes his or her productivity and happiness possible - even if we may not agree on all of the details of how that money is spent.

Umddogs1- Pay attention and learn- 50% of US households pay no federal INCOME tax- plain and simple that is a true statement. There is no federal sales tax, federal property tax, and FICA/Medicare are not taxes but contributions to a future entitlements. (When social security and Medicare were founded- no one wanted to raise tax rates so they developed a new revenue stream in the form of payroll tax with the selling point it was a forced retirement entitlement and not just another tax) Do you think it is right that 50% of Americans pay ZERO in federal income tax (the largest single source of federal revenue)?

Lakeliver- please ask Warren Buffet and other liberals why they don't voluntarily pay more in taxation. I am also willing to bet that Buffet's tax advisors use all the legal tax loopholes at the same time Buffet is telling us we should raise taxes. If liberals were truly as compassionate as they claim- they should willingly give up legal tax deductions to provide more revenue for the federal government for their favorite programs. Spending other people's money is not compassion...

Charlie- I agree with most of your post except the fact that so much tax revenue is wasted. Furthermore- we have seen time after time when the government is given more tax revenue- it simply spends more than it has without prioritizing. Keep taxation as local as possible is also a key to minimizing waste and maximizing it's use.