Running for the senate, Elizabeth Warren elegantly distilled her logic of why wealthy individuals and multinational corporations need to pay their fair share and give back to the country that has given them so much.

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.”

Yet the wealthiest pay a smaller percentage of their income and profits than those with far less.

As of the third quarter of 2011, a trend that continues today, corporate tax receipts as a share of profits are at their lowest level in at least 40 years. Total corporate federal taxes paid fell to 12.1% of profits earned from activities within the U.S. That’s the lowest level since at least 1972. And well below the 25.6% companies paid on average from 1987 to 2008.

GE is the poster child for avoiding its responsibility. Though it has been earning billions in profits, it paid an average tax rate of just 1.8% between 2002 and 2011, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. From 2006 to 2011, GE’s net federal income taxes have been negative $2.7 billion, despite $39.2 billion in pretax U.S. profits over the six years.

Despite the fact that America’s corporate tax rate is 35%, 115 companies on the S&P500 pay less than 20% in taxes, according to a study the Capital IQ and The New York Times. That’s not even counting 37 companies like Citigroup and AIG that received more in tax credits than they paid. All this thanks to loopholes in the immensely complicated tax code.

How can America ever again be the great country it once was when the wealthiest among us fail to contribute to our infrastructure, education, police and fire departments?