To the editor,

There has been a lot of discussion of taxes lately. Some say the top-earners (and corporations) are overburdened and we need them to have more money to spur the economy. Others say they should pay more. My first thought was to look at data to see whether we have any facts to support one side or the other.

In the last half-century or so, corporate taxes dropped by 69 percent while individual taxes went up by 67 percent. The effective tax rate of the top 1 percent went down by 57 percent while the tax rate of middle-income taxpayers has almost quadrupled. In the last 20 years, wealth of the bottom 40 percent went down by 76 percent, and for the top 1 percent it increased by 42 percent. Seventy percent of the new wealth created went to the top 5 percent of earners, while 80 percent of America received only 9 percent of it. These figures come from United For A Fair Economy (www.faireconomy.org/econ/state/Talking_Taxes).

The data do not support that top taxpayers (corporations included) are overburdened, nor are they helping to spur economic growth for anyone but themselves. Billionaire Warren Buffet summed it up recently by saying, “If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning.”

Paul Atchley,

Lawrence