Bar stool economics

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Heywood,
I don't think you're giving enough consideration to some of the criticism. Take for instance the obvious criticism that the bar stool economics lesson only takes into account income tax rates.

Income taxes make up about 41% of total tax revenue. Excise, payroll, and corporate income taxes are embedded in the price of all goods and services and are paid by everyone. The fact that this was ignored in an attempt to portray the bottom 40% of wage earners as getting a free ride with no tax liability is simply disingenuous.

Quite so. Indirect taxation impacts on poorer consumers to a much larger degree than it does richer consumers, for obvious reasons. Indeed, raising the indirect tax levels of (for example, in the UK, VAT) can have a massive impact on the MPC of poorer demographics, more so perhaps than raising/lowering direct taxation (eg Income Tax).