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Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
A coherent critique? Such as "they have nothing to say" or "that is idiotic"? Coherent, I guess...but not much content to it.
I'm still most struck by the idea that 90% is a reasonable marginal tax rate. Simple as it was, EaseUp's first post in this thread seems very appropriate.
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Republican Eisenhower was president when the top rate was <a href="http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php">91 percent</a> (on annual income above $400,000), when new college graduates often worked for less than $4000 per year....and the <a href="http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/f04.html">Gini coefficient was 35.1</a>....it's 44 now.
I think that Shakran (post #3) summed up best, where you are probably coming from:
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....We see all these displays of wealth around us and dream of one day having it for ourselves. The American Dream myth lives on.....
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Recognize that the rich have bought the potential of your government to control their endeavors. They are taking for themselves, the rights, the political influence, and the wealth that common folks stood up for in the past, and were bloodied or killed by the thugs that the rich hired to discourage them from doing so. These accomplishments and controls....NLRB, OSHA, SEC, FCC, are being intentionally compromised as we watch. But you don't seem as concerned about that as you do about the top tax rate paid during a republican administration, 50 years ago.
My question is, why are you more concerned about what the tax rate on income above a level of more than 100 times average income of a worker just out of college was, 50 years ago, than you seem to be about what has happened since, about the trend, and the current status quo, and the inroads that the rich have made, using the political and the propaganda clout that they've bought with their increasing wealth, that now enables them to carve out a chunk of the "pie" for themselves. that is nearly 1/3 greater than 50 years ago. That leaves the rest of us....the other 90 plus percent, with 56 percent, instead of the 65.9 percent that we controlled in 1956.
What do you suppose the trend will be, with the stacking of the SCOTUS with Roberts and Alito, and the stacking of the NLRB entirely with 5 pro-management republican members, and the softening of inheritance tax rates for at least the next 3 fiscal years, and the doubling of the defense budget, and then some, in just the last 6 fiscal years, in the guise of fighting a GWOT that has rendered us less secure, with fewer allies, enemies with many more grievances against us, and with new US treasury debt of nearly $5 trillion, by the end of next year.
Your concerns seem misplaced, IMO.
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http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fac...es/ustax.shtml
.....Seen in a broader picture, the 1986 tax act represented the penultimate installment of an extraordinary process of tax rate reductions. Over the 22 year period from 1964 to 1986 the top individual tax rate was reduced from 91 to 28 percent. However, because upper-income taxpayers increasingly chose to receive their income in taxable form, and because of the broadening of the tax base, the progressivity of the tax system actually rose during this period........
.....Between 1986 and 1990 the Federal tax burden rose as a share of GDP from 17.5 to 18 percent. Despite this increase in the overall tax burden, persistent budget deficits due to even higher levels of government spending created near constant pressure to increase taxes. Thus, in 1990 the Congress enacted a significant tax increase featuring an increase in the top tax rate to 31 percent. Shortly after his election, President Clinton insisted on and the Congress enacted a second major tax increase in 1993 in which the top tax rate was raised to 36 percent and a 10 percent surcharge was added, leaving the effective top tax rate at 39.6 percent. Clearly, the trend toward lower marginal tax rates had been reversed, but, as it turns out, only temporarily.......
.......The Bush Tax Cut
By 2001, the total tax take had produced a projected unified budget surplus of $281 billion, with a cumulative 10 year projected surplus of $5.6 trillion. Much of this surplus reflected a rising tax burden as a share of GDP due to the interaction of rising real incomes and a progressive tax rate structure. Consequently, under President George W. Bush's leadership the Congress halted the projected future increases in the tax burden by passing the Economic Growth and Tax Relief and Reconciliation Act of 2001. The centerpiece of the 2001 tax cut was to regain some of the ground lost in the 1990s in terms of lower marginal tax rates. Though the rate reductions are to be phased in over many years, ultimately the top tax rate will fall from 39.6 percent to 33 percent......
........Another feature of the 2001 tax cut that is particularly noteworthy is that it put the estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes on course for eventual repeal, which is also another step toward a consumption tax. One novel feature of the 2001 tax cut compared to most large tax bills is that it was almost devoid of business tax provisions......
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Confining it's subject matter to examining why Kansans overwhelmingly vote republican, the 2004 book "What's the Matter With Kansas?", pondered the question of how and why "have nots", support candidates financed by wealthy conservatives and corporations:
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Downwardly mobile and picking up speed
Once-radical flyover country now votes against its own interests, Frank says
Reviewed by Paul Buhle
Sunday, June 20, 2004
<b>What's the Matter With Kansas?</b>
How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
......Today's Mr. and Mrs. Block are downwardly mobile but eager to enshrine the very right-wingers who are ruining their public institutions, their environment and their children's futures.
Why do they do it? Frank spends a great deal of time in close observation of repackaged reality, from congressional offices to public displays to the private lives of the faithful. In the inner ring of suburbs and fading factory towns where the American Dream grows steadily out of reach, he pinpoints the "plent-T-plaint." This "curious amassing of petty, unrelated beefs with the world" neatly combines assorted gripes about the obscenity, disrespect and immorality of a supposed liberalism run rampant. No combination of enhanced tax benefits for the wealthy, no increase in military weaponry, no assault on abortion rights or local victory against Darwinism can calm this orchestrated road rage. ......
Paul Buhle teaches at Brown University, and his latest book is "From the Lower East Side to Hollywood: Jews in American Popular Culture."
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The U.S. has experienced political shifts, beginning with the the "great depression" in the 1932 elections, that transferred the presidency to a democrat.......and democrats dominated in the executive and legislative branches, with the exception of the 8 year Eisenhower presidency, for the next 36 years. Compared to later republican presidents, Eisenhower could be described as a "centrist".
Today on a webpage at the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation site, (Milton was the late younger brother of republican president Dwight Eisenhower,) the following is displayed:
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http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/..._economic.html
.......With an eye to Thomas Jefferson's warning against the antidemocratic "aristocracy of our moneyed corporations," the United States needs to return corporate taxes to the levels in force during the Eisenhower administration. We also need to increase the top marginal tax rate for the super-rich to about 50 percent. This would still be far below the top marginal income tax rate of 91 percent during the Eisenhower administration.
Repealing the tax cuts given to the super-rich would return more than $85 bilomglion per year from the richest 5 percent of the population. Returning to corporate tax rates in force during the Eisenhower administration could increase tax revenues by roughly $110 billion more per year. Returning to a 50 percent top marginal inomgcome tax rate far below the top rate in the Eisenhower administration could capture as much as $90 billion more per year from the richest 2 percent of the population.
At the same time, we should provide tax cuts to the 150 million hard-working workers who are struggling because they can't afford to buy all they need. Millionomgaires don't need additional spending money. Workers, middle-class Americans, and the poor do. Their spending will stimulate the economy more effectively, help busiomgnesses, and be more fair to the Americans who need fairness the most. There is amomgple economic evidence that putting money in the pockets of average Americans stimulates the economy much more than further lining the pockets of the rich........
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