>Actually in the article I posted some months ago, now part
>of the URPE reader,
>I did argue for discounting tax-the-rich politics, but in
>favor of big tax/big spending
>politics. I also provided a bunch of numbers on how little
>taxing the rich or
>corporations does for the social-democratic cause.
There's a Luxembourg Income Study working paper - sorry I don't have the ref handy - that argues that countries with progressive tax systems don't have a more egalitarian post-fisc (i.e., post-tax, post-transfer) distribution of income. What matters for income distribution is spending much more than taxation.
The post-federal tax (including *all* federal taxes, not only the income taxes that Nathan wants to focus on) distribution of income has gotten more unequal during the Clinton years. Here are the numbers, which I cobbled together from several CBO reports. Nathan's reluctance to believe the CBO reminds me of those right-wingers in the 1980s and early 1990s who wouldn't believe the Democrat-controlled CBO.
posttax income share
1993 1994 1999 quintile
1 4.6% 4.7% 3.8%
2 10.2% 10.3% 9.1%
3 15.7% 15.8% 14.6%
4 22.1% 22.2% 21.7%
5 47.5% 46.9% 50.9%
top 5% 22.8% 22.1% 25.3% top 1% 11.8% 11.1% 12.7%