In his recently released deficit plan, President Obama lays out the “Buffett Rule” (named, of course, for Warren Buffett, the famous investor and supporter of Obama). The rule, as Obama defines it, is “that people making more than $1 million a year should not pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families pay.”
Obama’s clear inference, of course, is that this otherwise happens routinely; that the rich are shirking their citizenly duties while the middle class pays. Is this inference true? Or is it simply a political fiction, a straw man from which Obama hopes to make hay in 2012?
