When the Heritage Foundation tells us that the top 10 percent of filers are cruelly burdened, because they pay 68 percent of income taxes, it’s hoping that you won’t notice that word “income” — other taxes, such as the payroll tax, are far less progressive. But it’s also hoping you don’t know that the top 10 percent receive almost half of all income and own 75 percent of the nation’s wealth, which makes their burden seem a lot less disproportionate.

— Paul Krugman, Nobel-winning economist, in a column in the New York Times called, “Our Invisible Rich.” Krugman says Americans’ ideas about the 1% are based on 1960s notions of wealth, and woefully inaccurate today.

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