Rearranging deck chairs

Avinash highlighted this chart by economists Saez and Zucman that paints a vivid picture of what's happening to average tax rates by income group in the U.S. It goes a long way in explaining why there is such dismay with income distribution.The population is divided into roughly 10 groups of equal size (deciles). The top decile, those with income above the 90th-percentile, is subdivided into six additional groups, with the top group consisting of just 400 people. In simple terms, the lines have not moved much for the bottom 11 groups, i.e. anyone not in the top 1%. Deeper blue indicates more recent data. If anything, these lines have shifted upwards, meaning that everyone not in the top 1% has been paying slightly higher tax rates over time. The top 1% (subdivided into four groups) have seen a dramatic decrease in tax rates. By 2000, they become somewhat "linear" with the other income groups. But don't let this chart fool you – because of the subdivision of the top 1%, the numbers on…