Shapiro also debunked the idea that the "One Percenters" don't pay their "fair share," noting that the top 1 percent "pay 39 percent of federal income taxes. The top 10 percent pay 70.6 percent of federal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent of income earners pay less than 3 percent of our federal income taxes. America’s tax system is more progressive than any other developed country in the world, according to The Washington Post."
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV of France, famously compared the art of raising tax to “plucking the goose so as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing”.