Tax Facts for Hannitized Ditto-Heads.1929 when the stock market crashed, the upper tax bracket for the rich was only 24%... Today in 2010 it is 35%.
But when America was at our greatest, from 1940-1980, the upper tax rate for rich Americans was 88%-94%, until Kennedy took it down to 77%!
...During those years you could make a very good living and support your family and buy a house and a car, all on just one salary, while working at the most modest jobs in America. You could have a very good life for a whole family all supported by just one 'burger-flipper, or elevator operator, or simply pumping gas! Jobs that Rush Limbaugh now mocks people for having, used to be good paying jobs.
-Wake up, you've been lied to.
...First, as for WWII getting us out of the Depression and not FDR's public spending... the money spent on WWII... WAS...PUBLIC...SPENDING...
...It was the public spending of the war, along with the FDR public works spending that ended the Great Depression. If there had been no war, then FDR would have had to spend even more money on public works in order to end the Depression.
...You also must remember that this spending was not wasted because improving our Infrastructure actually increases the value of our land by making a more productive base for commerce to flourish. Better roads, rail, electric grid, communications grid, make the very land more valuable to the business world.
...We paid for this by having an upper tax rate of 88% for rich people all during the 1940s and then we raised the tax rate to 94% to help pay for all of this. Our upper tax rate stayed above 90% from 1944-1963. During this time Eisenhower built our entire Interstate Expressway system!This was America at our best at our very peak!
...Now our rates are all the way down to 35% for the rich and look where we are. Limbaugh and Hannity have been lying about America's tax and financial history for years. You can check these facts in any encyclopedia, or at this link...
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php
How is it fair that rich people have to pay more taxes? Just wondering.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the question Peter. I realize that it seems most natural to say that all people should pay the same amount or rate of taxes, but all I can say is look at the history in those tables and compare our history to them.
ReplyDeleteFrom 1940-1980 with the highest earners paying triple what they do today our nation became a superpower and the industrial giant of the world. Everyone's standards of living went way up and even the super rich got super richer.
Partially it is because even Republicans like President Dwight Eisenhower spent for the nations good, he built our entire interstate expressway system. Something that large could only be organized by government and yet without it rich folk and corporations could have never prospered the way they did.
There is also this argument.If we're all born equal, then those born poor in a country where all the land is owned (no more open prairies) must feel like those at the top, those who were born at the top are sharing in a way to make things fair, otherwise they have the natural human right to stand up and say "I am equal under God" and revolt and take the land and factories and riches back from the wealthy.
This has happened countless times in human history.
If it's fair that rich people should be taxed that much, then let's cut out the middle man.
ReplyDeleteThe median income for the US is what, $60,000?
So why don't you write me a check for the difference?
Then I can be as "equal" as you.
Alan, try to answer this please...
ReplyDeleteEconomic conservatives had lowered financial regulations and taxes on the rich to about 20% right up to the crash of 1929 and the Depression.
FDR took them up to 88% on the rich and they stayed around there from 1940- 1980...
Why and how did the USA do so great and really rule the world economically from 1940-80, with no debt.
And why are we so much worse off since Reagan and the deregulators and tax cutters took over?
Peter -
ReplyDeleteThe answer is: First, those who benefit more from government and society (which - as chip has pointed out above - creates the environnment in which the economy rises or falls) owe more to it: the wealthy got wealthy due to not only the government-and-society created business environment, but to the many people who worked for them, and the people who bought their products and services. Second, if you look at the charts, you'll find that every time the top tax rate moves, the economy moves in the same direction, i.e. cutting taxes on the rich lowers the economic growth rate, raising them raises it. Third, the graduated income tax is the ONLY tax that has been proven historically to work (even Adam Smith, *the* conservative economist, stated this explicitly). Fourth, A high enough flat tax to keep goverment going would place too much of a burden on those who were not wealthy, especially the poor. The rich get a higher rate (which they can afford to pay) so that the poor and middle class can pay a rate *they* can afford to pay. Fifth, with all the loopholes, a person making $1 million actually pays about the same percentage of their income in federal taxes as someone making $37,000. So we have a flat tax now, and we can see how well THAT is working out.
Alan -
Let's turn it around (essentially), and say "Why don't we cut out the middleman and eliminate all government-provided services which benefit the poor and middle class?" Well, we had that for a long time, and the result by 1929 was a few very wealthy, a tiny middle class, and poverty for 92% (!) of families.
And actually, (as Paul Krugman has pointed out) we could provide a guaranteed income to the poor of, say, $10 an hour (but with no negative effect on the economy: that amount wouldn't be high enough for people to leave the workforce, but it would keep the poor out of poverty (albeit barely). On top of that, the money would be spent immediately, and so go right back into the economy.
Sergei Rostov
Thanks Sergei, right on and well said.
ReplyDeleteYou are always going to have the poor and poverty. Poverty motivates the poor to do for them self. It is my fear of poverty that that gets me out of bed and keeps me going to work. If I need a fish for a meal, I go fishing. Give me a fish for a meal what need have I to go fishing.
ReplyDeleteFacts are facts...
ReplyDeleteThose tax rates allowed us to build the YS economic machine...infrastructure
ReplyDeleteAs to why the rich should pay more, or at a higher rate (as they did from 1940-80) while some poor pay nothing? When this nation was founded and there was no federal income tax at all, we still had land armies and a Navy and fought wars and built roads and bridges and dams and funded research and paid our politicians...and do you know how we did that?
IMPORT TARIFFS-AND IMPORT TARIFFS WERE PAID ONLY BY THE RICHEST BUSINESSMEN OF ALL. It was taken for granted by our founding fathers that the wealthiest 'winners' in the capitalism casino had to pay the bills and nobody complained that the lowly sharecropper used the public roads he paid not a dime for to take his crop to market...and the poor man has never been made rich for giving life and limb to defend this land either...What price on that my friends?
oops, I;m sleepy...that's US ECONOMIC MACHINE...
ReplyDelete