Comment by disgruntledphd2

> Why does this matter? The government spends X dollars each fiscal year, divided by the number (N) of people. Most people aren't paying X/N.

It matters because we don't know if these people are being taxed more proportionately or less. Like, Elon Musk pays more tax than you or I, but he probably pays at a much lower rate.

What you don't want (from an equity and fairness perspective) is for people with more money to pay a lower rate of tax. That will cause problems.

From a total population perspective, given some amount of money S it doesn't really matter who pays it (except for downstream impacts around fairness and elections).

However, your original point was:

> The vast majority of adults and their children will never pay their tax burden proportionately.

I would argue that this is incorrect, everyone pays some proportion of their income in income/sales/property/estate taxes. And really, your point about who pays the majority of US federal taxes doesn't actually support your point.

Finally, I would note that I mostly replied because I really hate those top x% comparisons as they're deceptive without looking at the proportion of income earned.