Comment by majjam

This article cherry-picks a lot and makes quite a few distorted comparisons. To prove the rates on rich citizens are high, they show the rate on low-income citizens in America is lower than other countries, and that the tax curves upward in the US. They use this to argue that the government could spend money differently, but if you look at the numbers in detail you might see tax burden being roughly 20% higher on the poor and roughly 30% higher on the rich in some countries with huge social services. You might also see that 20% being negligible for that poor single mom given that she spends more than that on healthcare that's instead state provided, but not going bankrupt because of broken underfunded healthcare provided by the 30% for the rich might be important for her. Or having public transit so she doesn't have to own and maintain a car on a low income job, etc. Even just using the percentage of income coming from which demographics while ignoring the services provided creates a lot of skew because for instance higher taxes on the poor replacing an insurance mandate with services might end up with the poor spending less total money for better healthcare.