Breakdown of polling results from The New York Times
On the heels of President Obama’s State of the Union Address calling for economic fairness, a new CBS/New York Times just released reveals that:
More than half – 55 percent – think upper income Americans pay less than their fairshare of taxes. Only a quarter says higher income people pay the right amount in taxes.
Also as you can tell from the polling results, when you isolate the independents (those that identify with neither the Republican or Democratic parties), the number of those that believe that upper income people are not paying their fair share goes up to 58%. Here is the link to the CBS analysis of the poll and here is the link to The New York Times breakdown of the poll.
So much for the Occupy Wall Street movement “not having a cohesive message”. When you have moved the President of the United States to adopt your message, I’d say that’s pretty damn ‘cohesive’. The President said (transcript via ThinkProgress):
When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right. Americans know it’s not right.