wants a 91% tax bracket in the u.s. without deductions or loopholes. He honestly believes people will work for 9 cents of every dollar. back in the 50's when the tax bracket was that high there were so many loopholes and deductions, the tax code was much different. This is the moron some of you so highly regard?
The genius paul krugman
- Thread starter msog87
- Start date
Here's the article, not quite as you present it. He says nothing about having no loopholes or deductions. You lied again
[h=1]The Twinkie Manifesto[/h][h=6]By PAUL KRUGMAN[/h][h=6]Published: November 18, 2012[/h]Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesThe Twinkie, it turns out, was introduced way back in 1930. In our memories, however, the iconic snack will forever be identified with the 1950s, when Hostess popularized the brand by sponsoring “The Howdy Doody Show.” And the demise of Hostess has unleashed a wave of baby boomer nostalgia for a seemingly more innocent time.
Paul Krugman
[h=6]Go to Columnist Page »[/h]
[h=6]Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal[/h]
Consider the question of tax rates on the wealthy. The modern American right, and much of the alleged center, is obsessed with the notion that low tax rates at the top are essential to growth. Remember that Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, charged with producing a plan to curb deficits, nonetheless somehow ended up listing “lower tax rates” as a “guiding principle.”
Yet in the 1950s incomes in the top bracket faced a marginal tax rate of 91, that’s right, 91 percent, while taxes on corporate profits were twice as large, relative to national income, as in recent years. The best estimates suggest that circa 1960 the top 0.01 percent of Americans paid an effective federal tax rate of more than 70 percent, twice what they pay today.
Nor were high taxes the only burden wealthy businessmen had to bear. They also faced a labor force with a degree of bargaining power hard to imagine today. In 1955 roughly a third of American workers were union members. In the biggest companies, management and labor bargained as equals, so much so that it was common to talk about corporations serving an array of “stakeholders” as opposed to merely serving stockholders.
Squeezed between high taxes and empowered workers, executives were relatively impoverished by the standards of either earlier or later generations. In 1955 Fortune magazine published an essay, “How top executives live,” which emphasized how modest their lifestyles had become compared with days of yore. The vast mansions, armies of servants, and huge yachts of the 1920s were no more; by 1955 the typical executive, Fortune claimed, lived in a smallish suburban house, relied on part-time help and skippered his own relatively small boat.
The data confirm Fortune’s impressions. Between the 1920s and the 1950s real incomes for the richest Americans fell sharply, not just compared with the middle class but in absolute terms. According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, in 1955 the real incomes of the top 0.01 percent of Americans were less than half what they had been in the late 1920s, and their share of total income was down by three-quarters.
Today, of course, the mansions, armies of servants and yachts are back, bigger than ever — and any hint of policies that might crimp plutocrats’ style is met with cries of “socialism.” Indeed, the whole Romney campaign was based on the premise that President Obama’s threat to modestly raise taxes on top incomes, plus his temerity in suggesting that some bankers had behaved badly, were crippling the economy. Surely, then, the far less plutocrat-friendly environment of the 1950s must have been an economic disaster, right?
Actually, some people thought so at the time. Paul Ryan and many other modern conservatives are devotees of Ayn Rand. Well, the collapsing, moocher-infested nation she portrayed in “Atlas Shrugged,” published in 1957, was basically Dwight Eisenhower’s America.
Strange to say, however, the oppressed executives Fortune portrayed in 1955 didn’t go Galt and deprive the nation of their talents. On the contrary, if Fortune is to be believed, they were working harder than ever. And the high-tax, strong-union decades after World War II were in fact marked by spectacular, widely shared economic growth: nothing before or since has matched the doubling of median family income between 1947 and 1973.
Which brings us back to the nostalgia thing.
There are, let’s face it, some people in our political life who pine for the days when minorities and women knew their place, gays stayed firmly in the closet and congressmen asked, “Are you now or have you ever been?” The rest of us, however, are very glad those days are gone. We are, morally, a much better nation than we were. Oh, and the food has improved a lot, too.
Along the way, however, we’ve forgotten something important — namely, that economic justice and economic growth aren’t incompatible. America in the 1950s made the rich pay their fair share; it gave workers the power to bargain for decent wages and benefits; yet contrary to right-wing propaganda then and now, it prospered. And we can do that again.
In 47 a man had a wife that took care of the kids and house. In 73 wife had to work to pay bills. Great success.
I should have phrased it as " without the loopholes and deductions that existed back then". I will also add this, the top 5% now pay roughly 60% of the federal tax revenue, back in the 1950's that number was around 35% with all the deductions and loopholes and outright tax evasion that existed. so, today they are paying much more in federal taxes with a 35% marginal rate WHICH PROVES they pay more in federal taxes today than in the 1950's even though the marginal rate is less than half it was before.
The top 5% are not the problem though I think we could pay more than we do. It is the top 0.1% that is a huge problem to the point where we should almost just have a wealth tax on all assets above your first ten million. Most of that will be income generating at some level anyway.
So maybe a flat 2% annual tax on assets over the million as an alternative minimum tax. Not a tax on profit or income, on the assets.
Yes you did, he said nothing about no tax breaks, you're putting your own spin on it. The fact that they don't exist today has nothing to do with what he wants.
imposing a wealth tax on the .01% wont do anything to change the deficit, and its just bad economics. the richer an individual gets, the more productive they had to be. To increase their wealth they needed to invest and create jobs to do it, getting richer only benefits society liberals seem to think the rich just suck the wealth out of the economy and hoard it for themselves, as if they only got richer bc they took more and more from everyone else. the truth is the size of an economy is infinite, the rich grow the economy thus growing their wealth, and in the process benefit society by creating jobs and creating wealth for everyone else.
It would solve a very serious social problem though. The increasing gap between the average person and the very rich is distorting our society in destructive ways.
A 2% tax on wealth > 10 million ought to be fairly equivalent to an income tax in any case. If you aren't putting your 20th million to work well enough that it generates a better than 6% return then you don't deserve to have it anyway, and if you are generating that better than 6% return we're talking about a 30% or less tax on your income. However, as a wealth tax, there are far fewer ways to fudge the books and avoid paying.
All the results of Republican GLOBALISM!!!....
GLOBALISM....A Race To The Bottom!....:Eek:
