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Post being replied to

The idea of progressive taxation... by Kbyrnes

...isn't so much to compare what the high earner pays in taxes to what the low earner pays; but to consider impact that each additional dollar of tax has at various income levels, given the generally known costs of living.

If you have a family of four and AGI of $500K and have spendable income of $475K after taxes, you have covered the base costs of living far more comfortably than the person who has $47,500 left after taxes or about $4,000 a month. If you kept to the ratio of 30% of gross for rent, that would leave $1,200 a month for rent for the low earner and $12,000 a month for the high earner. A family of four in DuPage is going to have a very hard time finding housing for $1,200 a month.

Other everyday taxes are regressive, anyway, such as the sales tax.

To you last point, I believe that there is no such thing as objective fairness, any more than there is objective value for real estate (a taxpayer's appraiser I'm thinking of liked to talk about the "intrinsic" dollar value of the real estate, which is a fiction). Fairness in public policy is what the greatest number would agree to be fair.