Well you absolutely don't know that. And whilst no doubt some people _are_ avoiding tax, many are not. And btw overall the rich pay a far higher portion of their income in tax than the poor. In the UK for example the top 1% of earners account for 30% of the total tax take (up from 20% 10 years ago). The top 3,000 pay more than the 9m bottom.
If you earn a salary that puts you in the literal 1%, you probably pay an effective tax rate of 30-50%. I don't know how low your income needs to get to reach a 15% tax rate on income, but it's really low.
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-...
2. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2012/0119/U...
> I don't know how low your income needs to get to reach a 15% tax rate on income, but it's really low.
I was below 15% in the low $70k range for sure. We'll see what it is this year.
The poorly paid actually spend a much higher % of there income in tax than the top 1%. And their contribution has been rising as the income and wealth based taxes are cut and the consumption based taxes have risen.
I don't blame you for thinking that is the case though as this canard has been pushed heavily by the UK press.
Some people are so rich they don't even appear on the rich lists. I don't know how much tax they pay, but I suspect it isn't much.
Generally, if you can literally fit the people who own most of the economic assets of a country into a small hall, you have a serious democratic deficit.
If you're in the top 3000 people by income in the UK, you get to ride the same crappy trains as everyone else, drive the same crappy roads (unless you try go everywhere by helicopter - hardly practical), get the same government services, have access to the same markets and the same products in those markets; how many companies produce luxury goods these days? Unless you're an idiot and buy diamond encrusted iPhones, the stuff in your house is going to be similar to other people's. You'll be eating similar meat, drinking the same water. You could collect rare art or something, but that's hardly a meaningful part of the national economy.
The top 3000 get pretty similar benefits from the economy as everyone else, they just pay a lot more in absolute terms for the privilege.
Um you're confusing equal access with equal benefit...
> you get to ride the same crappy trains as everyone else, drive the same crappy roads (unless you try go everywhere by helicopter - hardly practical), get the same government services, have access to the same markets and the same products in those markets
Yea, except by being the super rich, you're benefiting far more from all those same crappy assets. Think about a rich person in retail.... their millions/billions depend on the existence of all those crappy roads to bring them customers and products to sell them. When said roads disappear, you both lose access to them, but the rich person loses far more as his access to customers also depends on those roads.
Equal access and equal benefit are vastly different things. The rich benefit more from infrastructure than the poor because their businesses are built upon and depend upon them.