Average incomes

I've been looking again at IRS's sources of income data for 2007,   There was a total income AGI for all filers and payers of $8.688T, which works out to an average income of about $29K for all 300M Americans, including children, pensioners, etc., while average income among people who actually paid taxes was $90K.    Median income among filers was $15K, while median income among taxpayers was about $20K.   (the difference is that there were 46.7M people who filed a tax return but were not taxable.  Mostly this means they had too little income to tax, or that somehow this income was excluded.   It may also mean that someone else filed on the same income for some reason)

That $60K discrepancy is significant.  That means the top 50% of people who actually paid tax is making $60K a year more than the bottom 50%.  Realistically, nobody making less than about $25K per person can afford to pay more than a nominal tax.  But the point is, there's a /lot/ of money in the economy for doing things that will help the great numbers of Americans.