Our tax system in the United States and in Rhode Island takes from the poor, the middle class and even from the upper middle class to subsidize the very rich — those with incomes over $1 million per year. This violates important moral principles that underpin civilization and democracy.

To correct this we must reverse the Bush and Carcieri tax cuts for the very rich. And income and capital-gains taxes should be increased on the portion of one’s income greater than $500,000 per year, so that we can support good schools, programs for our needy citizens and a significant reduction in property taxes.

If you make $30,000 to $500,000 per year, you are a lower-income or middle-income taxpayer and your hard-earned tax dollars are subsidizing the very rich, who pay successively smaller percentages of their rapidly rising incomes, tax cut after tax cut. It has been difficult for middle-class taxpayers to pay larger shares of the total tax pie, because the incomes of this group, adjusted for inflation, have remained almost constant since the 1970’s.

As an example, consider the incomes and taxes of the top 400 individual taxpayers, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

They had $100.3 billion in adjusted gross income. Thus they controlled 1.15 percent of the nation’s total income in 2005 — twice the share they controlled in 1995. Over that same period, with help from the Bush tax cuts, the federal tax burden for this group fell from 30 percent to 18 percent.

In this way, our tax system is forcing the monetary benefits of American society to flow up and pool at the top.

As another example, the top 1/100 of 1 percent of taxpayers — 30,000 Americans in 2005 — had an average income of $3.4 million in 1975 and $25.7 million in 2005. This group of Americans went from controlling 1.3 percent of U.S. income in 1980 to more than 5 percent in 2005. Their slice of the total income pie just keeps getting larger with time, as their tax rates get lower.

Let’s now look at Rhode Island’s state and local taxes, based on data from 2004 and including the effect of federal itemized deductions.

The lowest-income 20 percent of taxpayers, making less than $15,000, had a tax burden of 13 percent of their income, because of paying state and local sales, excise, property and income taxes. The next 75 percent, with incomes between $15,000 and $144,000, had a tax burden of a little over 10 percent of their income. The next 4 percent, with incomes between $144,000 and $272,000, had a tax burden of 7.2 percent of their income. And finally, the top 1 percent, with incomes exceeding $272,000, had a tax burden of 6 percent of their income. Shockingly, low-income Rhode Islanders paid at more than twice the rate of high-income residents. And that was before the very rich were further helped by a reduction of the capital-gains tax and introduction of the flat tax in 2006.

The reduction of one’s income from $15,000 to $13,050, due to paying state and local taxes in Rhode Island, is very painful, because the remainder is insufficient to provide access to decent subsistence, health care, housing, education, job training and transportation. That’s not even taking federal taxes into account. On the other hand, the reduction of a $1 million-per-year income to $940,000, due to paying state and local taxes in Rhode Island, does little to reduce access to life’s needs.

We need a shift back to better state and federal government policy.

Since 1980, it has become the result of government tax policy to ensure that the super-rich receive the benefits of government, the poor get a few crumbs for smokescreen and the middle class stagnate and pay the bills, including interest on the huge national debt. By contrast, starting in the 1930s, and especially in the years after World War II, it was government policy to grow the middle class, turning America into a land of better educated and healthier people, with a first-class infrastructure .

The first step back is to return the income and capital-gains taxes for the very rich toward those levels that help to make civilization work.

Making civilization work is beneficial to the very rich as well, because they can more easily and effectively access its benefits. And it reduces the unpleasant aspects of sallying forth from a protected, gated enclave surrounded by a desperate, deprived, servant class — the situation to which we are being pulled by current tax policy.

We must demand that our Rhode Island legislators reverse two special benefits for the very rich by returning the long-term capital-gains tax back to 5 percent and by repealing the flat tax. Also, income taxes and capital-gains taxes should be increased on the portion of income that is greater than $500,000 per year, so that we can support good schools, programs for our needy citizens, repair of our infrastructure and provide a significant reduction in property taxes. Then middle-class taxpayers could receive at least a modest reduction in their total state taxes. And a tax increase could then be supported by the vast majority of taxpayers — a tax “increase” where everybody wins, including the very rich.

Donald W. Tufts, of Warwick, is a former chairman of the School Committee and member of the Town Council in East Greenwich, plus a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Rhode Island.