Not if there is dis-savings at the lower levels.
Your perception that in the United States high incomes must invest more proportionately has no real basis to it, and is not supported by any study I have ever been able to locate.
I'll look for one for you.
You'll get a kick out of this. I gave command to post this, went on search for the statistics you say you have never been able to locate, went to the BLS, and immediately found what you have been looking for. It supports the common sense belief that the more one earns the more one saves. As it turned out, my command to post didn't take and I can link you to the report you've been looking for right now. I'm sure that other stats abound showing the same thing.
The table tells us nothing definitive so we can relate it to tax burdens of a particular persons as characterised by longterm income group across a lifetime where it counts, nor does it report all the sources of expended dollars available for each group's spending.
From a look at the expenditures and reported income sources at each level it is clear that there are capital subsidies for the lower brackets (not welfare or SS) declining in importance as we move up the scale of income. This table indicates a fairly close and proportionate relationship between actual income available for expenditure and personal expenditure reported if we assume the excess expenditure's arise from inherited, saved or invested wealth.
| Income | less than $5,000 |
5,000 to 9,999 |
10,000 to 14,999 |
15,000 to 19,999 |
20,000 to 29,999 |
30,000 to 39,999 |
40,000 to 49,999 |
50,000 to 59,999 |
greater than 60,000 |
|
| Expenditure | 17,946 | 15,703 | 21,199 | 24,331 | 29,852 | 35,609 | 42,323 | 49,245 | 75,964 | |
| Gross Income | 1,942 | 7,192 | 12,245 | 17,070 | 23,666 | 32,720 | 41,498 | 54,432 | 102,578 |
How about a lifetime study that provides an understanding of the lifetime income as it relates to lifetime expenditure. An annual snapshot tells us little.
Note that lowest bracket on average owns a home worth $40,008. How did they come by it if they are chronically poor and not retired or living off an inherited wealth?
These numbers gives us few clues as to who has avg income of 1,942 and manages to spend nearly 18,000 dollars for example. Most of that expenditure is housing and transportation and food away from home with health care in the range of eating out. That group's income is clearly being subsidized in a manner not being reported as personal income in this table and they are pretty healthy folks. By the way the table does report welfare subsidies & SS payments and other government benefits that are included in the reported before tax income so the expenditure must be coming out of capital savings,
I know of no one actually recieving less than $5,000 capable of spending anything near 18,000 a year unless they are living off previously earned capital as in savings or capital from an annuity or inheritence.
Give us a study, not a table that can be reflects a lifetime income vs lifetime expenditure so we can establish the real burden of taxation and how it is distributed with respect to chronically poor vs the lifetime rich, and the rest of us mobile folk in between.
You will also not that it does not address the rich, but clumps the top together at what most consider to be upper middle income today.
It supports the common sense belief that the more one earns the more one saves.
Duh!! Savings in proportion to income does not preclude that result even at a net 3.4% rate.
However the table looks to me to supports the idea of the more one has saved out of prior earnings, the more likely they do not earn current income, but spend more than they receive as they grow beyond the need of a earnings and investment and rely more on aquired lifetime capital wealth to meet their needs.
Look at the table more closely, those folks with the avg $1,942 annual income, own $40,000 homes, and on average spend
$6,670 a year maintaining that home
$2,993 a year in transportation
$1000 a year eating out,
$900 a year in clothes,
$982 a year in medical care,
$986 a year in education and reading,
$330 a year in personal insurance & pensions
etc....
There grand $1,942 income includes $1,495 wages & salaries, interest, investment income, plus SS, public assistance, foodstamps, retirements, the whole ball of wax.
Seems to me you have something a bit scewed making this information useless for the purposes of determining real tax burdens as regards "poor" vs "rich" folks.