The Art of Taxation

March 27, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

When I saw this,


I knew it had to be one of the New York abstract impressionists. But which one? Frank Stella gone curvy? Morris Louis turned sideways and making clearer line separations? Kenneth Noland?
But it’s a graph of taxpayers (original here). Here it is with title and axis labels:


(Click on the image for a larger view.)

It shows the relative tax burden by income level. Each horizontal line is a year, its width “sized and colored by the tax burden: the amount of tax due relative to the long-term average at each income level. Above-average burdens appear thick and red and below-average thin and blue.” The wedge of blue that begins at $8000 in 1974 is the Carter era change that excluded low-wage earners from the income tax.

I mentally divided the graph at the $100K vertical and looked at the relative shares since about 1980. The graph shows what everyone knows – the very rich, who had been paying a bit more in the Clinton years, made out like bandits in the Bush years. In the graph, they have recaptured their 1920s position as the thin blue line. But the Bush tax cuts lightened the burden of the poor and even middle-income people. Hence, the deficits that Republicans are now so concerned about.

I leave it to critics like Flâneuse to say what in the graph needs work. What struck me was the similarity between data and art.*

Last year’s version of the same data seemed much harder to read. It also looked very much like some of Clyfford Still’s canvases.



* “The graph is better; at least it has meaning.” That was the reaction of my friend Sol, an actual artist who in his youth studied with the New York School gang, lived down the street from the Cedar Tavern, and even played mandolin with Rothko. So I respect his opinion (I also use his casual sketch of me as my Facebook pic).

1 comment:

  1. I can't understand your undulating tree-ring chart -- but I gather from your comments that it amounts to more class-warfare fodder.

    My figures (National Taxpayers Union - doubtless validated elsewhere) show:
    1999: top 1% (300K and up) paid 36% personal income taxes, bottom 50% (26.4K and below) paid 4%.

    2008: top 1% (380K and up) paid 38% of personal income taxes, bottom 50% (less than 33K) paid 2.7%.

    Sorry to use such a crude and understandable communication. Not very sophisticated to give actual numbers instead of artistic tree-rings.

    Hey - and top 10% gave 66.5% of total personal income taxes in 1999 and 70% in 2008. Doesn't quite reach slave-labor numbers.

    I guess the numbers for the old Soviet Union showed everyone paying the same amount... right?

    Jay - What's it like living in the 1930s flogging the old solidarity forever themes? Ever consider adopting a post-fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall value system? Just teasing. It'll never happen.

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