Do You Want to Talk "Fairness"?

Harvard professor Greg Mankiw does!   Here's his calculation of the net tax burden by quintile of the population, meaning the percentage of one's income one pays in taxes net of transfer payments one receives.   In other words (his):

Because transfer payments are, in effect, the opposite of taxes, it makes sense to look not just at taxes paid, but at taxes paid minus transfers received.  For 2009, the most recent year available, here are taxes less transfers as a percentage of market income (income that households earned from their work and savings):

Bottom quintile: -301 percent
Second quintile: -42 percent
Middle quintile: -5 percent
Fourth quintile: 10 percent
Highest quintile: 22 percent

Top one percent: 28 percent

The negative 301 percent means that a typical family in the bottom quintile receives about $3 in transfer payments for every dollar earned.

This is where we are in America ca. 2012 -- in an undeclared war of moochers versus makers.

Takers.

Versus.

Givers.

How exactly is a democracy founded on the concept of limited government to survive if more than half the people are net takers from the government trough?