Inequality of Taxes

While income inequality has a negative effect on the economy and society on a wide scale, we often seem to overlook the effect it has on a small and local scale. Throughout the history of the United States, the gap of wealth distribution between the top 10 percent, especially the top 1 percent and the rest of the income earners has increased dramatically, most significantly since the mid- 20th century. Seemingly since the wages have gone increasingly higher for the 1 percent of wealth owners, the middle and lower classes earnings have been stagnant in comparison for the last 50 or so years. When someone thinks of taxes, they usually think that the rich get taxed more often than everyone else, although that is not always the truth, as the rich repeatedly receive tax breaks and cuts while the rest of the population do not receive much relief from taxes by the government, “from 1979 to 2007 there were a number of major tax changes, but the cumulative effect was to render the federal tax code less progressive and therefore less able to dampen income inequality (Linden)”. To sum up, the tax rates for the rich should be regulated so that they are accurately proportionate to their income, while the lower and middle class get proportionate taxes to their income as well, while also receiving the same tax cuts and more that the upper class received from previous administrations that benefited the upper class and the top 20 percent of income earners.