WASHINGTON — What is curious about the present understandable preoccupation with the middle class is the assumption — both explicit and implicit — that the system is “rigged” (to use Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s favorite term) against this vast constituency of Americans. In reality, just the opposite is true. The system is rigged in favor of the middle class. That’s a natural result for a democracy where politicians compete more for votes than for dollars.
If you look at how the federal government spends and raises its money, the bias for the middle class and poor becomes plain. In fiscal 2014, about two-thirds of the $3.5 trillion federal budget went for “payments to individuals.” This covers 59 million Social Security recipients, more than 54 million Medicare beneficiaries (overlapping with Social Security), 68 million Medicaid recipients, 46 million food stamp recipients — and many more.
Meanwhile, government raises most of its taxes from the upper middle class and the wealthy. In 2011, the richest 1 percent of Americans paid 24 percent of all federal taxes (income, payroll and excise) and the richest 20 percent, including the top 1 percent, paid 69 percent of taxes, says the Congressional Budget Office.
It is possible to argue that, reflecting the growing inequality of market incomes, taxes on the rich and affluent should be higher or that middle-class subsidies should be more generous. It’s also possible to complain that some programs aimed at helping the poor and middle class have gone awry: College student loans, now worth about $1.1 trillion and facing 11 percent delinquency, are a current popular example. These are legitimate views, as are (of course) the opposing positions. They’re the stuff of responsible debate.
But if you accept these numbers — which I have cited many times — it is not possible to pretend that the whole superstructure of government has somehow been turned against the middle class. This is not just a distortion of reality; it is the converse of reality.