They do. Love, love, love the taxes. Every year, for several weeks around tax time, conservatives freak out and whine about middle and working class Americans who, for various reasons including unemployment, don't have to pay federal income taxes. For example, here's the Fox & Friends monkeys screeching about people who don't pay any taxes.
On the April 9 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, after co-host Gretchen Carlson stated that "yesterday we were reporting a story that 47 percent of all Americans don't pay any taxes," Fox Business host Stuart Varney stated: "Yes, 47 percent of households pay not a single dime in taxes. And some of those households actually make a profit from the Treasury." Co-host Steve Doocy asked, "Is that fair."
Bizarre. But not shocking considering the far-right penchant for contradictions. Conservatives claim to hate taxes, and then they complain when some people don't have to pay income taxes.
But it turns out that working and middle class Americans pay far more in total federal taxes. Courtesy of Meteor Blades, here's proof in convenient graph form:
Oh, and it's been proven and reported that rich people pay a lower effective tax rate -- that's the tax rate following deductions and credits -- than their employees. Let's ask Warren Buffett what he pays and what his secretary pays.
Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent.
But conservatives will tell you that Warren Buffett deserves a tax cut, and his secretary should pay $8000-a-year out of her own pocket for "Medicare" when she retires. And if she's ever laid off and doesn't pay any federal income tax that year, Steve Doocy will question whether or not that's "fair" -- while he cackles and hurls his own feces around the studio.