Troubadour
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- Oct 12, 2010
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Top US Marginal Income Tax Rates, 1913--2003 (TruthAndPolitics.org)
In fact, America was apparently an impoverished wasteland for half a century between Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. During this grim period of anguish, such horrors occurred as the invention of rock and roll, the creation of the suburban lifestyle, the introduction of television into broad use, the building of the Interstate highways, the landing of human beings on the Moon, the end of segregation, the development of the Internet, the advent of the communications satellite, the creation of the polio vaccine, the eradication of smallpox, the invention of antibiotics, the mass production of aircraft, the introduction of consumer air travel, the rise of American education to #1 in the world, and the largest trade surpluses in America's favor in the history of our nation. The culprits in this devastating Stalinist wasteland:
Franklin Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Dwight Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
But fortunately, America was soon rescued from the scourge of freedom and prosperity by the hero of heroes, Ronald Reagan. In the thirty years since he restored the private sector to its rightful place of absolute dominance over politics, our society has skyrocketed into the stratosphere of glory with such accomplishments as premium coffee bars, mortgage-backed securities trading, phones with touch screens, shoes with lights in them, the loss of (and failure to rebuild) an entire American city, the collapse of our education system, the eradication of American manufacturing, and the largest trade deficits in history with an undemocratic and militarily menacing country. Don't you love this free market paradise?
I suppose I can play this game too. From the time between FDR and Reagan there was: the invention of the atomic bomb, internment of Japanese-American citizens, Watergate, War on Drugs, growing national debt, Korea, Vietnam, conscription into the army, and a host of other things I won't bother listing.
Why are you under the impression we live in a completely free market society?
None of those resulted from high income tax rates. The purpose of this thread is to illustrate the absurdity of the common conservative position that high taxes necessarily yield poor economies. Clearly, for the better part of three decades - the period that shaped modern American identity - our society flourished as the envy of the world with tax rates that conservatives today would refer to as practically Communist. I just thought "Wow, I guess "Happy Days" must be some kind of propaganda."
There's no such thing as a completely free market. All terms are ultimately conditional.
We could probably tolerate the loss of government revenue from higher tax rates if it weren't for the liberals who want to redistribute the wealth, but the country and all of its citizens become more prosperous when the workers are allowed to keep more of what they earn. Kennedy, Reagan and Bush understood that, but Obama doesn't even seem to know anyone who understands it.None of those resulted from high income tax rates. The purpose of this thread is to illustrate the absurdity of the common conservative position that high taxes necessarily yield poor economies.
None of those resulted from high income tax rates. The purpose of this thread is to illustrate the absurdity of the common conservative position that high taxes necessarily yield poor economies. Clearly, for the better part of three decades - the period that shaped modern American identity - our society flourished as the envy of the world with tax rates that conservatives today would refer to as practically Communist. I just thought "Wow, I guess "Happy Days" must be some kind of propaganda."
There's no such thing as a completely free market. All terms are ultimately conditional.
Ugh, stupid sophism at work again. Will people never learn that correlation does not prove causation?
Look at what else we had after WWII. We started with huge pensions, road projects, etc. There were costs associated with such things that wouldn't have to be realized until, oh, I don't know, right about now? Someone had to pay those pensions, that fell to the current generation. Someone had to pay for the maintenance of the roads, that's falling to this generation. The society of the 1950s was an unsustainable society, and we are reaping the fruit of that time period now.
LOL talk about rewriting history there sport...
Top US Marginal Income Tax Rates, 1913--2003 (TruthAndPolitics.org)
In fact, America was apparently an impoverished wasteland for half a century between Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. During this grim period of anguish, such horrors occurred as the invention of rock and roll, the creation of the suburban lifestyle, the introduction of television into broad use, the building of the Interstate highways, the landing of human beings on the Moon, the end of segregation, the development of the Internet, the advent of the communications satellite, the creation of the polio vaccine, the eradication of smallpox, the invention of antibiotics, the mass production of aircraft, the introduction of consumer air travel, the rise of American education to #1 in the world, and the largest trade surpluses in America's favor in the history of our nation. The culprits in this devastating Stalinist wasteland:
Franklin Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Dwight Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
But fortunately, America was soon rescued from the scourge of freedom and prosperity by the hero of heroes, Ronald Reagan. In the thirty years since he restored the private sector to its rightful place of absolute dominance over politics, our society has skyrocketed into the stratosphere of glory with such accomplishments as premium coffee bars, mortgage-backed securities trading, phones with touch screens, shoes with lights in them, the loss of (and failure to rebuild) an entire American city, the collapse of our education system, the eradication of American manufacturing, and the largest trade deficits in history with an undemocratic and militarily menacing country. Don't you love this free market paradise?
What is your point?
Don't forget the disaster of LBJ's Great Society programs that led to the hyperinflation of the even more disastrous Carter years.
*That* is when Reagan rode to the rescue
after Obama-Reid-Pelosi, we will need another white knight to get us out of the swamp of Progressivism into which they have driven us.
We've done so well that we now rank as follows:
6th in global innovation-based competitiveness
11th among industrialized nations in the fraction of 25- to 34-year-olds who have graduated from high school
16th in college completion rate
22nd in broadband Internet access
24th in life expectancy at birth
27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving degrees in science or engineering
48th in quality of K-12 math and science education
and 29th in the number of mobile phones per 100 people.
Yes, America had sucha great economy back in the day, with the great depression and ww2 and all...yeah...
We could probably tolerate the loss of government revenue from higher tax rates
but the country and all of its citizens become more prosperous when the workers are allowed to keep more of what they earn.
Kennedy, Reagan and Bush understood that
but Obama doesn't even seem to know anyone who understands it.
So the underlying text here is, "Socialism is good"
because Americans are so bad at doing things now.
Look at all the socialist country's and how well they are "ranking" (and I never believe the ranking bs - its like lying with statistics)
I didn't realize the U.S. fights wars for free.
You cannot simply determine the state of an economy based on how much America's highest earners are taxed.
I need to see tax rates for all income brackets, capital gains taxes, taxes on businesses, excise taxes, etc.
Lastly, how exactly did income taxes on the wealthy create vaccines, internet, etc?
Polio's funding came from the March of Dimes (public donations), Universities, and research grants from the likes of Rockefeller and others.
Let's not confuse the highest marginal rate and its impact with the overall effective rate. It is one thing to have the highest marginal rate at 90% when the brackets are structured so that only, say, 1/4 of 1% of taxpayers are in that bracket. It is quite another to have the highest marginal rate at 35% or 39.5% when the brackets are structured so that, say, 50% or more of taxpayers are in that bracket.
After all, if the next $1,000,000 I earn is going to yield only $100,000 to me in after-tax income, what is the point? Is the extra effort really worth it?
The society of the 1950s was an unsustainable society, and we are reaping the fruit of that time period now.
What is your point?
He's trying to say that we don't have to worry about a high tax rate because at the very least it has a negligible effect on the economy. He's claiming this, though, purely on correlation and without any theoretical explanation.
The effects are certainly not instantaneous because the unintended consequences, even when foreseen by a sizable minority, often take a while to surface. For the latest example, note that the current recession began about a year after the Dems took over Congress.Your claim makes absolutely no sense. The inflation of the 1970s was not "hyperinflation" by any stretch of the imagination, and there is no mechanism to explain how social programs could cause inflation a decade after the fact. If they caused it at all, it would be nearly instantaneous due to the immediate introduction of money into a consumption-heavy area of the economy. Furthermore, where was all that inflation in the '40s, '50s, and early '60s, when tax rates were two to three times what they are now?
Hogwash. What he really did was cancel the liberal redistribution of money from those who earned it to those who didn't.Reagan didn't "rescue" anything - he just redistributed money from the public into the private sector, ...
Reagan's policies doubled the federal revenue over the decade following their implementation because people went back to work knowing they would not be robbed of the majority of the fruits of their labor. Homelessness followed from a liberal move to close the facilities providing long term care to folks suffering from mental illness.His policies single-handedly made homelessness a major phenomenon in America, created a permanent underclass, and set the stage for the evaporation of the middle-class by undermining basic infrastructure. He basically sold the floor beneath our feet for scrap and told us it was Christmas.
Not at all. As you noted a few lines later, "There are optimal tax rates..." and that is the argument Art Laffer makes. I urge you to set aside your blinders and review just what the Laffer Curve is all about.The Laffer Curve strikes again! :lamo You're basically claiming that zero taxation would yield infinite revenue.
Kennedy understood that the rates needed to be lower, but Johnson spent way more than the Kennedy cuts brought in. Reagan did understand that Keynesian ideas simply don't work. Unfortunately, even though federal revenues doubled over the next decade, Congress spent $1.65 for every new $1 that came in. You repeat the myth that he eviscerated the public sector, but only a liberal would claim that reducing a department's requested increase from 15% to 12% is a "drastic cut."Kennedy understood that the optimal top rate would be 70%, and even that level was accompanied by Keynesian deficit spending on infrastructure. Ronald Reagan didn't understand anything, he was just an ideologue opposed to progressive taxation who got whatever cuts he could while eviscerating the public sector.
I seem to know a great deal more than you do. Good intentions are not sufficient; it is the effect in the real world that counts.You certainly don't seem to know anything about President Obama's policies.
Agreed. We differ on whether the problem folks are those who create wealth (your apparent position) or those who wish to waste the wealth earned by others (my position).Americans aren't the problem - it's people in this country who consider themselves above America;...
Agreed. National Socialism is a much better description. Obama is much closer to Hitler than to Stalin or Mao.That right-wing rhetoric about "socialism" is ignorant and insane.
Troubador said:That is a nuance worth considering, but is it the case that the brackets were structured in that way?
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