What Taxing the Rich Could Yield

[LV426]

The OP suggested taxing the wealthy and pointed to the top 15 families wealth. My point is you could take everything they have and it wouldn't cover any of the first five years of Obamas debt run up.

No one is saying that it is supposed to, nor that is the plan.

You're the ones who stapled teabags to your faces and tried to convince everyone you were deficit hawks after supporting tax cuts that doubled the debt in 8 years.

All you do is create straw men. You should be set designer on the next Wicker Man remake...

 

[canceled.2021.1]

You could no more help me in an intellectual pursuit than Rush Limbaugh could help me in staying trip and in shape.

Dream on.

And if you want to think that the differences between the haves and have-nots was not an essential ingredient in the French uprising...be my guest.

It is kind of humorous. Especially since it is such a frantic attempt to dodge the issues we have actually been discussing

You are a fucking moron. And I doubt you could ever be much more.

What does “trip and in shape” mean?

If you are going to call others morons, you might not want to write like one. Just a thought Frankie. I am always looking out for you buddy and will continue to pray for you

 

[Ross Dolan]

What does “trip and in shape” mean?

If you are going to call others morons, you might not want to write like one. Just a thought Frankie. I am always looking out for you buddy and will continue to pray for you

Oops...you got another one, IHA.

I screwed up...and typed "trip" rather than "trim."

Haste makes waste! Got a plumbing problem I am working on that is distracting me...but that truly is no excuse for not carefully proofreading each post. If one has no pride in one's posts...it makes no sense to hit the post button.

And thanks for the "prayers."

I understand that prayers can move mountains.

Have you ever tested that?

 

[Ralph]

America’s 15 wealthiest families are worth a combined $618 billion. That’s not good for our economy—or our democracy.

The New York Times investigation into the Trump family’s financial misdeeds recently revealed what had been obvious to most: The president is no self-made man. Like so many bombshell stories about the president, this story has been largely overlooked as new and more flagrant Trump indignities erupt nearly every day. Yet the tactics that the report shines a light on are hardly peculiar to the Trumps. Many wealthy families use similar tactics to stockpile their wealth and keep it from taxation that could reinvest it to meet the nation’s needs. And in doing so, these families keep building wealth with which they can wield political power.

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) takes a close look at the billionaire multi-generation families who wield that power—the American dynasties. Taking their cue from the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people in the United States, the report, "Billionaire Bonanza," by Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good, and Josh Hoxie, director of the Project on Opportunity and Taxation, both at IPS, details how the nation’s 15 wealthiest families—some with household names (Walton, Koch, Mars), some perhaps less-known (Duncan, Bass, Stryker)—are worth a combined $618 billion.

Overwhelmingly, this is inherited money; the companies from which these families derive their wealth were all started at least a generation ago.

https://prospect.org/article/what-taxing-rich-could-yield

It will "yield" the same thing it did under King Roosevelt. Economic recession and welfare. I prefer to listen to JFK if I am going to listen to a democrat, "It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and revenue to low (when JFK was elected the tax rate on the rich was 91%...but the fed had less tax revenue per capita than it did in the 80s when the tax rate was capped in the 30% range, so what did JFK conclude and then run on?)…...THE SOUNDEST WAY TO RAISE THE REVENUES IN THE LONG RUN IS TO CUT THE RATES NOW." -- JFK.

Progressive taxation has never worked because it reduces the work force and earned income for the 99%.

 

[Flash]

FFS, you're swapping the "effective rate" in for the "marginal rate", and you're doing that dishonestly because you're pretending all income is the same, therefore it is taxed at the same rate.

I wasn't pretending anything. The discussion was about federal income tax rates and what is what I posted. However, the effective tax rate includes the percentage paid on all income--wages, rental income, business income, etc. All income is not taxed at the same rate, but the effective tax rate includes taxes paid on all income sources.

You are the only one playing a game to make the results fit your preconceived prejudices. Then, when I post data to refute your claims, you will jump to another topic by claiming I did not include something new which was not even a part of the discussion.

Again, the effective tax rate is the percent paid in federal individual income taxes on all sources of income.

Again, you try to change the topic but are still wrong even when considering all sources of income.

 

[Poor Richard Saunders]

Liberals are envious and want to believe anyone who is wealthy had to cheat to get their money.

The top 10% currently pays 55% of all federal income taxes and 40% of earners pay 0 (many get refunded taxes they did not pay through the EITC). The top 40% pay 106% of all federal income taxes (because of the EITC).

The percent of total federal income taxes paid by the wealthy has been increasing over the years because their share of the income has been increasing--exactly the way progressive income taxes are supposed to work. In 1979 the top 10% paid 39.1% of all federal income taxes; today, they pay 55%. The wealthy are the only group who pay a higher percentage of federal income taxes than their share of total income--all other groups pay a smaller percent of income taxes than their share of income.

You miss so many parts of the taxation picture, it's hard to know where to start.
First of all income taxes make up a lower percentage of federal income than it did in 1979. 61% in 1979. 56% in 2017
Corporate owners pay the corporate income taxes out of their profits. Corporate income taxes have declined by almost 60% from 1979 to 2017 which means "rich" corporate owners have seen a corporate income tax decrease which you fail to account for.

But the real issue is how much of spending are the taxes paying for. In 1979, the deficit was 1.6% of GDP. In 2017 it was 3.5% of GDP. You can argue that the "rich" are paying more in income taxes but in reality it seems they are paying less of the federal spending in 2017 than they did in 1979.

The wealthy are the only group who pay a higher percentage of federal income taxes than their share of total income--all other groups pay a smaller percent of income taxes than their share of income.

By ignoring the other 43% of taxes you get to make a statement that has little meaning in the over all scheme of government revenues.

Let's examine that.
In 2017, for a person with a taxable income of $400,000, the federal government is collecting 35.9% of that last dollar. (33% income tax plus 2.9% Medicare split between employer and tax payer.)
For a person with a taxable income of $100,000 the federal government is collecting 43.3% of that last dollar. (28% income tax plus 2.9% Medicare and 12.4% Social Security split between employer and tax payer.)
A person making $10 million dollars not as a wage earner is only paying 39.6% on that last dollar. If that last dollar comes from capital gains then they are only paying 15%.

The real problem is that the government has long tried to balance it's budget on the back of the low income wage earners paying into Social Security. By not collecting enough in income taxes or other general revenue and borrowing from the SS trust fund, the government has hidden how much it is truly underfunded. Now that the borrowing from SS is coming due, rather than raising taxes where the true deficits have been, the government has decided to stiff the lower income wage earners.

There is no simple answer here but your simplistic numbers don't come close to giving a true picture of taxes and who pays them.

Historical tax tables from the US Budget
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/hist-fy2019.pdf

 

[Flash]

Fuck you Flash, you're the one who sought out that red herring on the income percentile because you didn't want to admit the same, fat, stupid, uneducated Trump voters are the same fat, stupid, uneducated people drinking themselves to death out of despair.

The despair caused them to vote for Trump.

You are the one who claimed the $30,000 median individual income is in the 67th percentile--not me. That shows you have no idea what median and percentile means.

You also made up the claim that the middle-aged white people increased mortality rates were Trump supporters. If you had bothered to read the study it said nothing about political ideology--you just made that part up. And, black mortality is even higher, but has not been increasing. So, Hillary supporters fit that pattern more than white voters. Plus, those in the lowest income categories (0-$30,000 and $30,000-$50,000) had a majority vote for Hillary--so she has the lowest income voters (and educational level). If the white people killing themselves with despair they are more Hillary voters if they are poor and uneducated.

I would never call those people fat or stupid regardless of whether they voted Democratic or Republican. That kind of condescension usually comes from those who can't handle their side losing the presidential election and make up negative stuff about the other side. That makes them worse than those they look down upon.

 

[Poor Richard Saunders]

A few things:

1. Back before Reagan, the tax burden was far more equitable and the middle and lower classes paid a larger share of the burden. But then you morons cut taxes, which resulted in people suddenly not paying any taxes, and the burden becoming less equitable.

Before Reagan, corporations paid a larger share of the tax burden. There were several books written in the 80's on this topic. Part of the reason the lower and middle income earners paid more then was because the wage disparities weren't as large. It would have been rare for a CEO to be earning more than 30 times their lowest paid worker.

2. While they pay 55% of the income taxes, the amount they pay is half of what it was before Reagan. So you are trying to lead people to a false conclusion by pretending that because they pay a larger share (completely your fault, by the way, for cutting taxes in the first place), that it's somehow unfair, but the part you leave out is that the amount they pay is about half of what they used to since their rate is about half of what it was in 1980.

The tax rate is not the effective tax rate. The Reagan tax cuts didn't cut taxes in half just because the tax rate was cut in half. The effective tax rate didn't drop by nearly as much because many deductions disappeared to help pay for the lower rates.

3. When you make lazy, bullshit arguments like this, be aware of your flank because they're so easily smacked down, and the problem is put right back on you.

4. If you're crying crocodile tears over the burden the wealthy pay while ignoring the fact that their rate is basically half of what it used to be, then you're a duplicitous, lying piece of shit who deserves no respect. Ever.

Full stop.

Lazy, bullshit arguments are made on both sides. Just because the other side is wrong doesn't make your argument correct.

 

[Flash]

You miss so many parts of the taxation picture, it's hard to know where to start.
First of all income taxes make up a lower percentage of federal income than it did in 1979. 61% in 1979. 56% in 2017

Nothing I said conflicts with this information. It does not deal with the federal income tax rates or who pays most of it which was the topic of conversation. I cannot include everything about tax policy, especially data which is not relevant to the discussion.

Corporate owners pay the corporate income taxes out of their profits. Corporate income taxes have declined by almost 60% from 1979 to 2017 which means "rich" corporate owners have seen a corporate income tax decrease which you fail to account for.

Only if you are not aware of changes in corporate income tax in recent years. When corporations paid a larger percentage of total federal income taxes they were mostly C-corporations. C-corporations pay federal income taxes on its profits. An S-corporation pays taxes through the individual income-tax returns of the owner. Tax rates led more corporations to become S-corporations--the result has been to increase individual income tax revenue but reduce corporation tax revenue although corporations are still paying through individual rates.

"Between 1980 to 2010, the category of businesses that includes S-corporations, sole proprietorships, partnerships and LLCs has increased by 10.9 million to over 30 million, while the number of corporations has declined....." During this same period (1980-2010) S-corporation income has increased fivefold, from $320 billion to more than $1.6 trillion...which is now more than C-corporation income while it was the reverse in 1980.

Corporations are paying more income taxes than they did in 1980, but most of these are through S-corporation individual rates. The decline was only among C-corporations which are fewer in number and produce less revenue than S-corporations.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-...-sanders-says-tax-share-paid-corporations-ha/

 

[Poor Richard Saunders]

Effective tax rate is not the same thing as a marginal tax rate, and the marginal rate is only on income. It's not adjusted gross income, as their effective tax rate would be zero. And you're probably not including those, right?

It's this kind of bullshit that makes it so difficult to take anything you say seriously.

So you conflate two different things; the effective tax rate and the marginal tax rate. The effective tax rate takes all taxes into account, including state and local taxes. The marginal tax rate is just the base federal income tax rate. So you jumped from one to the other to try and falsely re-frame a conversation so you don't have to admit you're full of shit.

So once again, this becomes about you and your ego, not the facts or truth.

You have to be careful when comparing rates. The effective tax rate is a better comparison because it takes into account deductions. But you can't use effective income tax rates to calculate effective tax rates since the majority of taxed paid by those earning salaries of less than $50,000 is FICA.

A true comparison takes into account all taxes including state and local sales taxes to calculate tax burdens borne by each percentile. But that isn't what Flash is using. He lists no source for his numbers. I call bullshit on them. The IRS also says only 35% of returns showed no income but that doesn't stop people from spouting their 50% of people don't pay income tax garbage.

 

[Poor Richard Saunders]

Nothing I said conflicts with this information. It does not deal with the federal income tax rates or who pays most of it which was the topic of conversation. I cannot include everything about tax policy, especially data which is not relevant to the discussion.

It goes to the heart of your cherry picked numbers. Of course you don't include things that would show how you are misusing the numbers. It would show your argument is based on a house of cards. If you don't like a gentle breeze then build stronger.

Only if you are not aware of changes in corporate income tax in recent years. When corporations paid a larger percentage of total federal income taxes they were mostly C-corporations. C-corporations pay federal income taxes on its profits. An S-corporation pays taxes through the individual income-tax returns of the owner. Tax rates led more corporations to become S-corporations--the result has been to increase individual income tax revenue but reduce corporation tax revenue although corporations are still paying through individual rates.

"Between 1980 to 2010, the category of businesses that includes S-corporations, sole proprietorships, partnerships and LLCs has increased by 10.9 million to over 30 million, while the number of corporations has declined....." During this same period (1980-2010) S-corporation income has increased fivefold, from $320 billion to more than $1.6 trillion...which is now more than C-corporation income while it was the reverse in 1980.

Corporations are paying more income taxes than they did in 1980, but most of these are through S-corporation individual rates. The decline was only among C-corporations which are fewer in number and produce less revenue than S-corporations.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-...-sanders-says-tax-share-paid-corporations-ha/

You seem to not understand how I used the numbers. If we ADD corporate taxes and personal income taxes we can roughly see what the upper income earners are paying. That is what I did. The type of corporation doesn't matter because the "rich" owners are paying the income tax in one place of the other. As long as we look at both, the math doesn't care where the payments are made just that they are included. What has happened from 1980 to 2014 is that the combined income tax received from the top tax rates and corporate tax rates has declined. You posted an increase in effective tax rate for the upper earners. That increase in personal income effective rate due to corporate pass through doesn't appear to cover the loss in corporate taxes.

Your link is meaningless since it compares 1959 to 2010. I am well aware of how much corporations contributed before the 70's but you were using 1979 as your baseline. (I read about it in the 80's.) I am merely pointing out how you are cherry picking the numbers you want to use. Yours is a simplistic approach that ignores data in order to support your preconceived conclusion.

 

[Flash]

But the real issue is how much of spending are the taxes paying for. In 1979, the deficit was 1.6% of GDP. In 2017 it was 3.5% of GDP. You can argue that the "rich" are paying more in income taxes but in reality it seems they are paying less of the federal spending in 2017 than they did in 1979.

Not true. The deficit as a percentage of GDP has nothing to do with how much was paid in taxes. It is more about spending which increased faster than tax revenue resulting in a higher deficit.

And, the rich are not only paying a larger share of federal individual income taxes, but a larger share of all federal taxes than they did in 1979 with the exception of excise taxes.

1979: Percent of all federal taxes paid by top 20%: 55.1%; 2014: 68.8%

1979: Percent of all federal individual income taxes paid by top 20%: 65%; 2014: 88.6%

1979: Percent of all federal payroll taxes paid by top 20%: 36.1%; 2014: 46%

1979: Percent of all federal corporate income taxes paid by top 20%: 67.3%; 2014: 78.3%

1979: Percent of all federal excise taxes paid by top 20%: 34.6%; 2014: 33.4%

[Congressional Budget Office]

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/shares-federal-tax-liabilities-all-households

By ignoring the other 43% of taxes you get to make a statement that has little meaning in the over all scheme of government revenues.

It was not ignored. The topic was federal income tax rates. However, if we examine that other 43% I illustrated above that the wealthy are paying more of total federal taxes, not just individual income, than they did in 1979 from 55.1% to 69.8%.

Let's examine that.

I think we all understand the payroll tax is not progressive. However, it becomes more progressive in its distribution. Social Security benefits reimburse lower income workers at a higher rate of their working income than higher income workers. Also, most people collect more in SS and Medicare benefits than they pay in taxes, so the difference is often subsidized by those paying in more payroll taxes. That is especially true of Medicare where there is a bigger shortfall between taxes and benefits and where upper income payroll taxes are paid on their entire salary.

 

[PoliTalker]

Hello signalmankenneth,

America’s 15 wealthiest families are worth a combined $618 billion. That’s not good for our economy—or our democracy.

The New York Times investigation into the Trump family’s financial misdeeds recently revealed what had been obvious to most: The president is no self-made man. Like so many bombshell stories about the president, this story has been largely overlooked as new and more flagrant Trump indignities erupt nearly every day. Yet the tactics that the report shines a light on are hardly peculiar to the Trumps. Many wealthy families use similar tactics to stockpile their wealth and keep it from taxation that could reinvest it to meet the nation’s needs. And in doing so, these families keep building wealth with which they can wield political power.

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) takes a close look at the billionaire multi-generation families who wield that power—the American dynasties. Taking their cue from the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people in the United States, the report, "Billionaire Bonanza," by Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good, and Josh Hoxie, director of the Project on Opportunity and Taxation, both at IPS, details how the nation’s 15 wealthiest families—some with household names (Walton, Koch, Mars), some perhaps less-known (Duncan, Bass, Stryker)—are worth a combined $618 billion.

Overwhelmingly, this is inherited money; the companies from which these families derive their wealth were all started at least a generation ago.

https://prospect.org/article/what-taxing-rich-could-yield

Great article:

"One way wealthy families have used their influence and millions has been to lobby against the estate tax, funding consultants and elected officials to campaign against it with deceptive messaging (“end the death tax”). That campaign has been notably successful. The GOP tax law doubled the estate tax exemption; wealthy families can now pass on up to $22 million without the estates being taxed. (While inheritances demonstrably reduce the incentive for rich heirs to work, the GOP also pushes forward work requirements in assistance programs as “work incentives.”) "

Most ultra wealthy families didn't work for what they have. They got born into wealth. Like President Trump. And you know his father evaded taxes like the plague. Dedication to community and country doesn't run high in that family. President Trump is only doing what he was taught, forever doomed to try to prove himself to his unloving father. It's just never good enough, Donald. You need to get more money. Always, it's never enough. There is no amount which is 'enough.'

 

[Flash]

The real problem is that the government has long tried to balance it's budget on the back of the low income wage earners paying into Social Security. By not collecting enough in income taxes or other general revenue and borrowing from the SS trust fund, the government has hidden how much it is truly underfunded. Now that the borrowing from SS is coming due, rather than raising taxes where the true deficits have been, the government has decided to stiff the lower income wage earners.

There is no simple answer here but your simplistic numbers don't come close to giving a true picture of taxes and who pays them.

Up until now you have at least been using real data although some was misapplied. This is just plain ideological claptrap.

1. Government has seldom tried to balance the budget and has only done so about 2-3 times.

2. It was not balanced at all but certainly had not been at the expense of low income since their share of federal taxes and their actual tax rate has declined. The bottom 20% paid an average federal income tax rate of 9.3% in 1979 and by 2014 their average tax rate was 1.9%. At the same time, their benefits increased with educational tax credits, Earned Income Tax Credit, child tax credit, child care tax credit, subsidized health care, etc. So, the lower income and elderly have received most of the benefits paid for by the top 50%.

3. Government in no way stiffed the lower income. And, you have fallen for that old myth that the government is borrowing from Social Security. The original Social Security law required any surplus be put in treasuries at 2% interest. There was no real surplus until the 1980s when payroll taxes were increased to build a surplus for the baby boomers who would retire in 2010.

A $2.5 trillion surplus accumulated in the trust fund and in 2010 Social Security benefits began exceeding revenue. That surplus is now being used to pay the shortfall. The problem with SS was a decline in the fertility rate, an increase in life expectancy, and a continual expansion of benefits and beneficiaries not included in the original program.

 

[PoliTalker]

This is from the OP article. It just makes sense:

"Instead of an estate tax that levies the estates of wealthy persons after they die, a progressive Congress could choose to instead tax the inheritance itself. Such a tax would alter the federal income tax to include heirs’ inheritances as taxable income, and add a surcharge no higher than the maximum payroll tax rate. Even including an exemption of $1.25 million, an inheritance tax could generate $670 billion in revenue over ten years, according to New York University Law Professor Lily Batchelder, who has written extensively on this issue and designed the framework for the tax.

But a yearly assessment on great wealth could make even more of a difference. A 1 percent flat tax on just the top 0.1 percent—on the assets of those worth more than $20 million—would result in $1.899 trillion in revenue in a single decade. That’s an amount that could yield significant investments in debt-free college, affordable housing, health care—and the list goes on.

With great fortunes now emerging in the largely monopolized tech economy, such policies become increasingly important. Jeff Bezos is now the world’s richest man, but he has not yet passed on his riches to the little Bezoses. There’s still time to ensure that a sizable share of his almost unfathomable wealth—impossible to have amassed had the Defense Department not funded the development of the internet many decades ago—is directed to public purposes and public needs through better tax policy—before a Bezos dynasty is formed.

“We’re not a society trying to create kings and queens and piles of hereditary fortunes,” says Collins, “but that’s essentially where we’re heading if we don’t intervene to break up these wealth dynasties. And if you think we’re already there,” he adds, the future “will be worse.”"

 

[Granule]

Well, if they steal everything,

Who's stealing, you pathetic fuck?

Go feed your goats.

 

[PoliTalker]

Poor and middle earner families use most of their income for lifestyle. A budget in this range is being very well managed if 33% of the income is saved toward fortune-building.

Rich and ultra rich families use a very small percentage of their income to support their lifestyle. Budgets in this range are able to put as much as 99% of their income toward fortune-building.

Progressive taxation takes this inequity into consideration.

If you look at taxes paid vs wealth, you will find that the wealthy and ultra-wealthy pay a very small amount of yearly taxes compared to their fortunes, whereas middle and poor pay a much larger percentage of their wealth in yearly taxes. For the poor, who essentially have no wealth at all, all taxes they pay in a year exceed their wealth.

Progressive taxation attempts to ease this tremendous mismatch, but it falls extremely short.

I believe we need more tax brackets on the upper end.

Why should somebody who is making a million dollars a year pay at the same rate as someone who is making 10 times that much? Or 100 times. Or more. I'm for giving the millionaires a break. Let them stay at current rates. Let's see what happens if we add more brackets on the top. And yes, let the highest rate go WAY up there. What is the point of amassing all this wealth in little pockets in the nation when it could be used to the public good? Why are we running up a huge federal debt concurrently to the rise of these ultra-wealthy people, many of whom simply got born into it? That makes no sense. We can balance our federal budget and we can do it out of the pockets of the ultra-wealthy.

 

[tff]

Leftists answer to everything is TAX THE RICH

When has it failed?

 

[Flash]

It goes to the heart of your cherry picked numbers. Of course you don't include things that would show how you are misusing the numbers. It would show your argument is based on a house of cards. If you don't like a gentle breeze then build stronger.




You seem to not understand how I used the numbers. If we ADD corporate taxes and personal income taxes we can roughly see what the upper income earners are paying. That is what I did. The type of corporation doesn't matter because the "rich" owners are paying the income tax in one place of the other. As long as we look at both, the math doesn't care where the payments are made just that they are included. What has happened from 1980 to 2014 is that the combined income tax received from the top tax rates and corporate tax rates has declined. You posted an increase in effective tax rate for the upper earners. That increase in personal income effective rate due to corporate pass through doesn't appear to cover the loss in corporate taxes.

Your link is meaningless since it compares 1959 to 2010. I am well aware of how much corporations contributed before the 70's but you were using 1979 as your baseline. (I read about it in the 80's.) I am merely pointing out how you are cherry picking the numbers you want to use. Yours is a simplistic approach that ignores data in order to support your preconceived conclusion.

You must not be looking at any of the IRS or CBO numbers to think 1979 is a "cherry picked" number. If you looked at their charts you would know that 1979 is the first year they use in their studies. I did not pick the number as a baseline but used the oldest year included by government data for income and taxes.

You added all individual income taxes and corporate income taxes? I'm not sure what you actually added. In 2014 the top 20% paid 88.6 of individual income taxes and 78.3% of corporate income taxes--both higher than 1979--the earliest year available. So the wealthy are paying most of individual and corporate income taxes.

Corporate income taxes as a percent of GDP has declined but individual income tax as a percent of GDP has increased and is higher today under a lower tax rate than under the higher tax rates of the 1950s & 1960s.

Federal Revenue as a Percent of GDP (average for decade) and top marginal tax rate:
1950's 16.7% (top tax rate 91-92%)
1960's 17.2% (70-91%)
1970's 17.3% (70%)
1980's 17.7% (28-70%)
1990's 17.9% (28%-39.6%)
2-2010 17.1% (35-39.1%)

As you can see, the highest tax rates of the 1950's resulted in the lowest amount of government revenue as a percent of GDP.

 

[Flash]

FFS, you're swapping the "effective rate" in for the "marginal rate", and you're doing that dishonestly because you're pretending all income is the same, therefore it is taxed at the same rate.

No, you have confused them. The top marginal tax rate has been cut from very high (70-90%) to about 39%. However, the amount people actually pay (effective rate) has not changed that much. Nobody actually paid 70-90% because there were many more deductions.

I didn't leave anything out. I reported the IRS data for tax rate that includes all those income sources.