Oh wow, ECS, those statistics are in no way less ambiguous or misleading. In some ways, especially combined with the earlier set of statistics, they are worse.
The first pile of statistics was of the percentage of total money collected in taxes, while the second is merely the threshold to be considered part of that group. So the bottom 20% could be a huge pile of people making $0 and a couple of guys making $19,000, while the top 20% could have a similar thing going on. What would be more useful as a comparison would be the mean incomes or total incomes of the two groups.
And as far as "the poor are getting wealthier faster than the rich are"...that is actually the complete opposite of the truth. And if you look at table 6 on that link it will say that the top 20% of the population makes about 60% of the income, which makes the statistic on how much of the taxes they pay seem quite reasonable, especially considering that the distribution of wealth is far more unequal.
The first pile of statistics was of the percentage of total money collected in taxes, while the second is merely the threshold to be considered part of that group. So the bottom 20% could be a huge pile of people making $0 and a couple of guys making $19,000, while the top 20% could have a similar thing going on. What would be more useful as a comparison would be the mean incomes or total incomes of the two groups.
And as far as "the poor are getting wealthier faster than the rich are"...that is actually the complete opposite of the truth. And if you look at table 6 on that link it will say that the top 20% of the population makes about 60% of the income, which makes the statistic on how much of the taxes they pay seem quite reasonable, especially considering that the distribution of wealth is far more unequal.