My point when mentioning payroll and regressive taxes was to show that many more people pay taxes despite what your graph showed. It's a classic regressive talking point to only discuss federal income tax as if that was the only way people were taxed, which it isn't.
Your "real hourly compensation" doesn't accurately account for real costs of living. One income family used to make the ends meet whereas many 2 income families can't make ends meet today. Their standard of living isn't higher than it used to be either (as shown by Warren's study among other evidence), so there is something wrong with your data, which isn't too surprising considering how many time methodologies have been tweaked to make numbers look better by successive administrations.
but none of the above addresses the salient points of my post above: inequalities that are as large as during the age of robber barons, trillions in profit not being taxed, paltry marginal rate of taxation, federal spending on many other things than the "welfare state", etc ...
j_bot's reply as usual:
- you're wrong
- I'll rephrase that you are wrong by making claims with no backing data other than "because I said so"
- chuck in a few insults
- include a few comments critical of administrations, policies, and historical situations he disagrees with, but are not directly related to the points being raised
Yes, indeed, substantive debate of the 'bot. He's really walking the walk!