From: Jeff Shultz 

On Wed, 18 Dec 2002 08:32:26 -0500, James Adams
 wrote:

>In yesterday's Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59577-2002Dec15.html
>
>It seems the administration feels the poor and middle class aren't
>paying their fair share of federal taxes.  The affluent are being
>over-taxed to take up the slack.  There is a reason for that - the poor
>don't have any money.  That's why they're poor.  The current
>administration isn't going to rest until the USA has been turned into a
>banana republic where 2% of the population controls 98% of the wealth.

Instead of one where the masses vote themselves bread and circuses?

From the same article:

But for the purposes of a tax reform debate, removing Social Security taxes
from consideration could have a sizable impact. The top 5 percent of the
nation's taxpayers paid 41 percent of all federal taxes, a hefty share,
according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. But that same group paid from
56 to 59 percent of all income taxes, an even more impressive burden.

"If we take out Social Security, the poor will look very lightly
taxed," said Robert S. McIntyre, of Citizens for Tax Justice, a tax
research group backed by organized labor.

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