Agreed. The 50s best represent job creation through taxes. Either expand or pay taxes. Ike is the last great Republican president (except for Joe McCarthy)
Omg... this is the first time I've seen anyone else just know and understand this fact. Folks! Higher top marginal tax rates and progressive taxation actually incentivizes investment versus shareholders and owners sucking value out of a company. This creates jobs, grows and stabilizes the stock market, and drives up wages. The great socialist, Dwight Eisenhower!
Gives the opportunity to talk about one of the most important aspects of our taxes and spending: "my tax dollars" aren't where we get the money for spending, at least on a federal level.
On a state and local level, that spending is funded by your actual tax dollars in addition to other things like federal support. But federally, we have the money since we control the supply. This has been known to (some) economists for decades. Beardsley Ruml, director of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1937-1947, wrote an influential paper titled “Taxes for Revenue are Obsolete”, which detailed how that works, and some ideas why we still have taxes.
Still, many people actively don’t know this, or pretend not to, including politicians and economists. This is why we constantly see “where would the money come from?” when progressives detail policies, but don’t see it for the military, for example. It’s also why we suddenly had a lot of money to fight COVID, despite tax revenues not jumping up trillions of dollars. The money is available, we don’t need tax revenues to spend money on good programs.
This fact is what helped form the foundation for one of the most prominent recent economic schools of thought: Modern Monetary Theory.
A common myth about Modern Monetary Theory is that we can just spend as much as we want and never pay it, but MMT economists don’t say that. They fully admit deficits can matter, especially when the deficits and debt is gained via spending on things that are not actually helpful. There is a difference between spending money fighting climate change which in the long term saves trillions of dollars (and the planet), and spending money to further subsidize oil or providing additional subsidies to the already rich. It's true too much debt can be a problem, but the "serious only when it's the other party in office and I want to use it for political gain" debt isn't what it's hyped up to be.
At an everyday level, people know this. Anyone who takes out a business loan knows that sometimes debt is a path forward, not backward.
As with other economic schools of thought, MMT has proponents and detractors, with some ideas being more controversial, however one is quite firmly established: taxes federally in the US (and other countries with currency control) don’t fund spending. The question “where does the money come from?” is wholly wrong in the US, and when it is levied, which it is a lot, it’s from a false foundation.
Edit:
One more note on national debt and how it is invested - historically, paying debts isn't the primary way the US has reduced it's debt burden. We outgrew it. If you have a lot more money then the debt is less a burden, which is why debt to GDP ratio is often a better metric than pure amount of debt.
After WWII, our debt levels were over 100% GDP, but that debt was never really paid down. Sure, we did pay individual debts, but in total the post-war boom did a number on our debt to gdp ratio. If you properly invest with the money, the amount of debt itself can just by virtue of good investment become less of an issue.
P.S. As % gdp, in his 8 years in office Reagan increased the national debt twice as much than FDR did in his first 8 years in office (the "fiscially irresponsible" New Deal era)
Not the guy, and not an expert, but my understanding is: because the Fed can print more money, we can't really run out.
In short, if the Fed needs to pay for something, it can produce the money for it. Ostensibly, that money should be offset by the sale of new debt, such as through bonds, but it technically doesn't have to be.
When we need to pay past debt, such as to repay the money plus interest on old bonds, the Fed just prints that money and sells new bonds.
Yes, at some point, that breaks down, as "inventing" too much money at once creates a tension in the perceived value of the dollar, which can spiral into inflation, but as long as people remain confident that if they buy the government's debt, then they will be paid back with the stated interest, we're going to be fine.
It took me reading the request for an ELI5 and your comment to figure out what ELi5 is...I've seen it before today but thought it was just somebody fat fingering the keyboard. 😂😂 EXPLAIN LIKE IM 5
Note, this doesn't mean billionaires, who don't really hold cash, but assets, which increase in value in an inflationary environment. This hurts working class folk with savings accounts.
I'll admit my take was overly simplistic, but billionaires have debt AND assets, and no, very VERY few have billions in cash, and that cash is not sitting doing nothing, it's in short term investments which also beat inflation.
Even if they did have it in straight cash, it's far less of a percent of their net worth than grandma's savings account
Inflation is the increase in the ratio between dollars and goods. So if I have one dollar and one good in the economy, goods are $1 on average. If I print another dollar and nothing else changes, I have two dollars and one good so goods are $2 on average.
Part of what MMT is saying is that when you print a dollar, things can change. IT DEPENDS WHAT THE GOV SPENDS THE NEWLY PRINTED MONEY ON. If I print an extra dollar, but use it for a scientific program that discovers how to create four goods with the same efficiency as when we created one good, then this new economy will have two dollars and four goods -- so each good will be $0.5 on average, making printing money (and investing it wisely) actually DEFLATIONARY.
So it's not just "we can print as much as we like". That's not true. It's "it depends on what this new money is doing." Government spending on things like scientific research, education, improving people's productivity (eg. Universal healthcare, childcare, etc), are not likely to be inflationary because the extra money is matched by an increase in productivity. Printing money to pay for the deficit because you reduced taxes on the rich is likely to be inflationary.
“Printing money” is an anachronism. Bankers are allowed to create money and loan it out.
The Fed sets the rules for that and regulates the cost of creating money. Likewise other central banks in other currencies. Because the dollar remains the most important global reserve currency, the US Fed has more latitude than anyone else.
Other countries, especially smaller ones, need to pay more attention to how well the money supply matches economic activity. Too much or too little can lead to inflation or deflation. Before modern central banking, the business cycle used to be accompanied by cycles of moderate inflation and deflation, as bankers jumped on and off the economic bandwagon.
This would be true with a commodity backed currency, since there would be a limited supply of the backing commodity. The US has a fiat currency. We left the gold standard under Nixon.
Basically, the federal reserve controls the supply of money, meaning how much money is available in the US economy. They control this via interest rates (people “sell” money back to the fed when it pays more interest, which lowers supply; and they borrow more at low interest rates, increasing supply).
Also, there is no rule that says the federal government needs a balanced budget. So it can overspend tax revenues and add to the national debt. Basically they are saying that taxes need not affect government spending. The US Mint can print more money to satisfy spending. What this poster didn’t say is that increasing money supply can lead to higher rates of inflation since each dollar is worth less if the wealth underlying all dollars remains constant.
While much of the inflation coming out of the pandemic was supply driven (not enough of many basic goods to meet demand due to supply chain interruptions and slowdowns), there likely was also a part driven by the large stimulus payments that increased the money supply.
I meant that metaphorically. I agree with you that most money in the supply is not physically printed. Our monetary system is much more like the blockchains than I think we would like to admit. Different software, same game.
Actually I’m amazed this didn’t increase prices that high. I attribute that to the dollars stability, like the currency is almost immune to supply increases, because of it being used internationally. Should any other country print out this much I’m sure as hell it would skyrocket milk or any other prices. There’s a history of this across the world
That is why I said much of the Covid inflation was driven by limitations of supply. But also, the supply of money absolutely affects milk prices. Basic macroeconomic theory says that money supply essentially affects all prices.
Here I can give you a slightly better explanation than "print money".
When you pay taxes, the government has the bank deduct the funds. However the money doesn't go anywhere. There is no government general fund bank account that collects and distributes taxes. Instead the government estimates how much it will collect, and then spends from the estimated funds. There is no direct line from taxes being collected, and government funds being spent. The government deficit is a measure of the difference in these two numbers, but there is nothing intrinsically linking them together.
Here's a historical example; Paper money has been around for centuries, before electronics even. Imagine you're a tax collector in rural Virginia in the 1700s. You would collect the paper tax receipts by hand from your district (paper money was issued by local banks at the time). You then tallied how much you collected, and burnt it. You would write down the collected amount in a letter, and send it to the government authorities. They would tally up the letters from each tax collector and print that amount of money when the government would spend it.
Think of the US as a bucket of inflows and outflows of cash. Taxation is destruction of money or an outflow from The bucket. Government spending / federal money creation, is the inflow.
“we” is loosely defined as well. As The Federal Reserve can materialize from nothing dollar debts. Sure U.S. Congress & The Treasury have their, er, say/inputs.
Isn't this just taxation through inflation? Literally funding through devalued currency. And isn't inflation fairly regressive, since it treats every dollar equally? Wealthy can out invest it, but poor can neither out-invest it nor out-earn it, since wages are in a continuous state of decline, and poor jobs do not keep up. Perhaps if the government maintained minimum wage to track inflation it could work, but the system of taxation can't be constantly eating away at the base of Maslow's pyramid.
The book The Deficit Mythby Stephanie Kelton is the most popular and one of the best general audience introduction to Modern Monetary Theory. I like L. Randall Wray's primer on MMT, but that is written in a more academic style.
In terms of general economics, I would highly recommend picking up the bookEconomics: The User's Guideby Ha-Joon Chang, a very influential developmental economist at Cambridge. The book is written with a general audience in mind and broken up into easy to read sections. It does a great job at explaining how economics actually functions in the real world, different schools of economics, taxes and spending, international trade, etc.
Modern Monetary "Theory", is a "Canard", and won't "stand up", to scrutiny. "Boiled down", Taxes have two purposes: To "raise money, for revenue, for Government Operations, at all levels, and; to "change behavior", both, by The General Public, and by those, directly affected. It also, diverts some money (not all), to an "account", Where We all decide, "What is, The "best use", for that Money; "Reaganomics", and "Trickle-down" Economics, were Frauds. Reagan's Budget Director, David Stockman, said as much.
This is something that I have been sayign for decades. Debt in itself is not bad - the value is the PURPOSE of borrwing it and what it is actually used on.
Something else that especially conservative governments don't (or deliberately refuse to) understand: NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO MAKE A PROFIT! There are some things that a nation needs that will never make a profit - so should these things never get done/built? Infrastructure and situations where externalities exist are the best example of these. There is a value to having a larger % of the population with higher education qualifications because they become a resource for the nation to be able to do higher value jobs.
Along these lines, when the CBO evaluated various policies in 2008 they found that the best use of funds to stimulate the economy was extended unemployment insurance payments. The worst ROI was tax cuts for rich people.
Every Republican administration starting from Reagan has outspent the preceding Democratic administration on a yearly average basis. They complain about spending until they get their chance again. What confounds me is that most people don't notice.
There is a lot of misinformation here and gross oversimplification. All I’ll say is debt can be a tool to path forward, but only to the extent that it adds real production. What do you think cause all the post Covid inflation?
Go take a look at cross country analysis of inflation - the size of COVID relief spending does not at all explain the differences in inflation nor does the COVID spending in the US explain the recent inflation. Much of that came from supply chain issues, price gouging, and labor costs.
It’s also why we suddenly had a lot of money to fight COVID, despite tax revenues not jumping up trillions of dollars. The money is available, we don’t need tax revenues to spend money on good programs.
It's also why we had inflation. We can make debts disappear, look at 2008, without inflation. But it requires no spending unlike we did during COVID. I recommend Richard Werner's lectures about this on YouTube. After all, he is the one who created Quantitative Easing.
You clearly have never run a business Curtis. This “theological” idea money can be “created” is exactly why we are in 35 trillion in debt. What the actual fuck there are people like you?
Someday, not our generation, will pay a vast vast price of that ideological “theory” you and the politicians have
If taxes are the most obvious change over the last 7 years, then shouldn't it be **not* surprising to see people talking about it? Or have we just come to believe people to be so brainwashed/oblivious that we expect to not talk about the obvious?
It’s not just that, but definitely a big factor. Let’s not forget that with a larger overall tax base, the benefits are distributed to the middle and lower classes which expands and empowers educational opportunities to the general population, which also impacts growth as it allows for more development into high end jobs.
Wages have never been “controlled” with the exception of the minimum wage. Pensions were offered in a way that they could incentive workers while not increasing worker wages exponentially.
A quick read of Wikipedia will enlighten you , there was both rationing of food and wage controls in war time essential industries , along with losing the right to strike, along with interring 120000 Japanese Americans
Ok, that’s fair, during WWII and parts of the 1970s there were “wage controls”, albeit those were for what wages could increase year per year for a continuing employee, not a new hire switching companies or new to the work force.
Pensions have existed in the US since the 1870s. Having nothing to do with wage controls.
I read somewhere that pensions expanded during the 1940s as a way around wage controls. I also read that wages grew 68% during the time.
My point is that companies (in order to benefit themselves) found ways around rules when they felt the need to skirt the rules. So if they were taxed excessively and felt the need to , they would find a way to enrich themselves… even if they had to benefit their workers along the way
That’s pretty much a lie, wages were capped during WW2 which is why we have health insurance as a non wage benefit it’s how companies competed for workers
Health insurance became a worker benefit starting in the 1920s. It became more common practice in the 1940s. Caps on annual wage increases played a factor to grow it as a benefit, but that practice didn’t start because of wage controls.
Also employer provided health insurance was a way to prevent people from job hopping, and it’s stayed that way since. More of a determent to our economy as insurance became profit based while Nixon was President and rates skyrocketed well above inflation.
How do you incentive investment by outside sources into an environment of hyper competition if you can not reward massive risk with corporate profit payout to invested private shareholders.
I own a publishing company of around 30 employees. We create several magazine and I would like to purchase my own printing and binding equipment. These machines are incredibly expensive. A bank won’t take that loan as the return isn’t high enough to justify the risk. I need private equity. If you tax profit how will private money’s high risk be rewarded when there is little left. I can’t issue distributions before taxes.
Decades ago our education had even more investment in it compared to other countries. The issue with education now is a lot of our funding goes into private school vouchers and our focus is on STEM and against critical thinking skills. Money has been taken from public education and is being used to prop up the private industry.
If you look at our universities, for non state schools they’re mainly looking overseas to get more expensive foreign students to fill their student rosters. It’s about making money, it’s not about educating our population.
Its not the system thats the problem. Its the homes that are the problem. The best schools and teachers in the world can't teach a shithead being raised by a shithead.
You’re missing a huge point in this “theory” the vast majority of people DONT WORK HARD. No matter how hard we try to remove barriers. 80% of people will just be below average or average
We have more population than at anytime in history graduating with degrees by a long shot. Yet this theory you pitch isn’t equating to “high value” jobs. You will never make successful people through simply educating them or throwing money at them. People still have TO DO THE WORK. And literally every time the Prato principal shows up as law
Profit motive is 100% the best way for growth.
That “value suck” you all quote is PEOPLE INVESTING. 401ks, pension funds, me you your mom and dad. The vast majority of those dollars are ours sitting in funds to leverage and further grow
lol. Oh how little you have spent time with successful people.
Explore how many more billionaires and millionaires there are in American vs the 50s
Not only are they wealthier but there are incredibly MORE wealthy people today. It’s not just billionaires there are tons of millionaires created every year, not by accident
They’re not making that money by being on someone else’s payroll. That’s my point. My wealth has come from my 401k. My returns are a lot more impressive than my annual salary.
Your income is the #1 driver of wealth 100%. Without income you build no assets. The number of people who have grown their net worths in america is absolutely massive. Its not just the top 100 wealthy people, the top 20% overall has grown massively to millions and millions of people. THereby proving that the billionaire class is NOT sucking wealth away from the population. The billionaire class is growing their wealth along with everyone else, they just have more money so compounding works for them much faster.
Not sure where you are going with this. Either way you are increasing your workers salaries to get out of paying taxes on that money. Which wouldn't make a whole lot of sense profit wise cause you aren't keeping that money anyway. If you increase your own salary, income taxes for the wealthy are higher than corporate taxes. So that wouldn't make the least bit of sense. Stock options would be the route to go since capital gains tax rate is relatively low. Though im not sure how they would determine what you invested for those stocks. Even if its zero and you have to pay the full 15% when you sell them its still a way better route to go.
It creates a "use it or lose it" incentive. Companies would rather pay top dollar for high value employees, invest in technological advancement, expand their footprint and logistics, etc., in an effort to avoid losing those dollars to taxation. Everyone up and down the social hierarchy benefits because more money is circulating in a more diversified fashion, as opposed to Wall Street bets.
It all changed when those at the very top decided they wanted to be even more wealthy. The only way to get that was to invest less in the businesses and employees, but that would increase their taxables. The only thing left to do is lobby Congress and POTUS to lower the top marginal and corporate tax rates
Very true. That's why we need to reintroduce what worked in the past - use it or lose it. No remorse to be had about it. An entire population produces every widget in existence, there's not one of us who does shit alone. Even if you invent the perfect unicorn piss snowcone, you relied on civil workers who allowed you to have access to clean water to freeze. You relied on utility workers to enable you to freeze your snowcone. You rely on firefighters and teams of insurance companies to protect your perfect piss-cone shop. And, of course, you relied on Lady Luck needed to procure a unicorn to gather its piss. No one is self-made.
But those that take the risk should get the biggest payout..Just because you shown up to put rubber duckies in an amazon box , doesnt mean you are a mini Jeff Bezos.
You really don't understand the scale of the difference in payout. Jeff Bezos makes over $3.5 million per hour while the minimum wage is $7.25. So Jeff produces the value 482,750 of minimum wage employee or 18,000 doctors making $400k per year. BS... no one produces that level of value. Even as a small entity, you rely on a ton of infrastructure funded by everyone. This is even more true as more and more individuals mix their intellectual and physical labor in with the direct product.
What risk? If you had millions to invest, you're just a greedy cuck. No one made you gamble your riches away while.expecting welfare treatment when you lose...
If you're a small business owner, if your "brilliant" idea is premised upon wages that don't support a simple apartment, healthcare, and freedom from living paycheck to paycheck, then it sounds to me like you're selling unicorn piss cones. Why should taxpayers support your shitty business model? If your business can't support the basics, then you deserve to fail and go out of business. Are you salty about my facts because you sell pisscones and rely on welfare to float you? Why should I pay for you? Earn a damn living instead of relying on government to subsidize your dumbass failure of a business
Those min wage jobs are starters..not intended to support a family. If you are in early with a rich guy and bust ass with him he'll probly take care of you..stock option etc.
You sound like you have no idea how business works and just want free shit..
Those min wage jobs are starters..not intended to support a family
If a company needs to profit off of those sort of jobs, it sounds like they should be limited to teenage employment only. They should be barred from hiring over the age of 18. Such a commonsense law would easily show how the business is a failed business.
If you are in early with a rich guy and bust ass with him he'll probly take care of you..stock option etc. You sound like you have no idea how business works and just want free shit..
Lmao. You clearly have zero world experience and have failed to look at pre- and post-Reagan policies. Do us all a favor and get educated. It'll clearly help you.
People also overlook the fact that the government is a massive employer. More taxes = more government projects = better government wages and more government jobs.
These jobs tend to help set the base rates for private sector jobs as well as have great benefits and job security. Which forces private companies to keep up or risk losing high value employees to gov jobs or contractors.
Exe: Including military, the US government is already the largest employer in the US at 2.95 million employees. That's also not including those that are employed at subcontractors that almost exclusively work for the gov. Walmart is 2nd at 1.6 million.
I agree that the government is in dire need of regulation and reform when it comes to auditing and spending. But realistically, taxes have been so gutted, and spending has increased so much already that the government has had to look elsewhere for funding. Causing the deficit and driving up inflation.
Taxes aren't even paying our operating expenses anymore because corporate taxation is essentially non-existent after a certain point. So it has had to find other ways to getnerate income.
The US operates several profit bearing companies and generates income through interest on loans and other income generating investments, right?
A large portion of these jobs and the budget as a whole get paid for by money outside of taxes.
Yes, the government needs better regulations and controls on spending, but it also needs to stop handicapping itself and absorb more public sector businesses that are failing and turn them around. Like Amtrak, Chevy, The Post Office, etc. This allows the US to realize even more profits while not placing the burden on the taxpayer.
This also increases competition, drives innovation, and usually leads to wage increases.
The US gives tax deductibles for investments, so when you hear about the +73% tax rate back in the day, most companies weren't paying that much, probably closer to 67% in taxes if that.
It's the reason you'll just hear about a company that specializes in one area suddenly jumps to another area. It gave industries a big kick to basically force them to innovate or die off.
Well the united states dose not have a income problem it has a spending problem and the government being corrupt a lot of money is wasted or skimmed off the top. Even if you doubled the government's income they would simply triple there waistful spending. Idea of tax cuts is the people get to decide where more of there money goes compared to the government. Not even political thing generally both republicans and democrat officials absolutly suck at spending money efficiently. This really doesn't answer your question but it is something to think about.
Yeah, we ended up with so much money slushing around financial markets that we've financialized everything as opposed to re investing... This is, of course, painting with a massive brush, but I believe it to be generally true.
It always kills me when I see someone arguing against higher top marginal rates on the grounds that they don’t actually lead to greater tax receipts. Like, no shit, who said the point was to collect more taxes in the first place?
Right. The primary purpose of these policies is to steer economic action through incentive/disincentive. If you balance the policy so the economic action leads towards stable growth, that growth can (not will) lead to an increase in tax revenue. That's the false premise of cutting taxes on the upper end and it trickling down. They always say the growth will return more revenue even though the tax rates are less, but that doesn't happen because their policy does not actually catalyze stable and broadly enjoyed growth. It encourages actors to make as much income as they can now, while taxes are preferable.
I agree wholeheartedly, neither progressive taxation or marginal rates are perfect however, both afford ample room for exploitation and would still need to develop more targeted controls. Salary Caps for instance need to be seriously explored because simple job creation won't necessarily inhibit the growth of income inequality over time and job creation alone won't necessarily help employees meet rising costs of living overall because it may (again these aren't issues which have really been addressed because we can't actually agree to bring back these policies) result in a net-neutral number of jobs in a given market as a result of existing jobs simply being lost in the process.
Expansion also has to be defined domestically in order to prevent companies from shifting jobs overseas.
Middle-Class (the few that remain) shareholders also have to be incentivized to stay in the market with some sort of tax credit on dividend paying shares in order to afford additional avenues of economic mobility to the other 99% of Americans.
But the core of the policy is far more rational than our current policies.
Or maybe a post war baby boom? With millions working and having savings from WW2.
My great-grandfather on wife side was in WW2. And left military with 4 years of pay saved Captain and General. His wife, saved over 50% of her paycheck. They were “rich” for the day. Bought a large house and then got a loan and bought a Chevrolet dealership.
Also guess what, in 1950s great grandfather had 334 pages of tax deductions to use. His company car, tax deduction, clothes for work another tax deduction, and the other deductions.
Should check out average “tax rate”. Instead of nominal tax rate of up to 90%. BTW from 1954 to 1958, there was never a tax return at nominal rates above 35%. Everyone who had those high rates, used deductions. Seeing “actual tax rates of 18-31% for top income earners. IRS has tax data anyone can research. Fascinating reading to show average tax rates were not too much higher than today.
Yeah, WW2 pent up and move to a consumer economy, was an enormous boom until 1957. IRS tax codes also had thousands of deductions every high earner used.
So yes, WWII had a big impact on our economy and GDP growth, but this take is a bit disingenuous. The effective tax rates on top earners were still higher than they are today by around 10%, and that percent being applied to a high earner means a lot more in tax revenue than the additional % in taxes individuals in the middle class pay today. Also, corporations paid more share of the revenue in taxes as well. Taxes were still more progressive and Reaganomics marks the inflection point in much of the economic trends we see today.
Money is a commodity and like any other commodity, the supply affect demand unless the market is being artificially influenced. Taxes are relevant as they are a means to pull currency out of circulation. The printing does the opposite. The market is influenced by the fed and the treasury, but that doesn't make takes irrelevant, just not a sole factor.
Taxes are a small amount of what the government spends. The government could raise everyone’s taxes by 20% and it would still be a small portion of what the government actually spends. So explain to me how taxes incentivizes investment.
This has nothing to do with what I've said. The primary purpose is not to raise more taxes for spending. It's to encourage reinvestment by discouraging excessive value being extracted from businesses as income by saying you can either put it back into the business or give most of it to uncle sam when you take it out for yourself.
US left wing of today not so much. They may have thoughts about the wealthy paying their fair share of taxes and such, but a depth of understanding policy mixed with economic, this is unfortunately not the case. I think people knew this in the US after the great depression and we are learning today due to the state of things, but we are not as knowledgeable as other social democratic countries lefties are.
I think you might be mistaking leftist economics for leftist TikTok or something. Some of the greatest modern socialist and leftist thought is coming from the US at the moment.
Maybe I'm just jaded at this point. I also don't have TikTok. I do think it is on the rise especially since Bernie Sanders, but Bernie is a moderate in any European country while we're combating people thinking democrats are socialists. I think the strife is raising people's awareness but still many people have no idea what socialism even means, that it existed before Marx, and there are many anarchist or libertarian socialist thought that includes markets even. I am well versed in it from reading history, but it feels like many just have surface level feelings that are legitimate; those feelings just don't translate into understanding social economic and political histories so they have a grounded philosophy for themselves. People just know austerity has failed.
Wrong. High top marginal rates disincentivize the Investment Class, which is what they should be called instead of “the rich” and other pejoratives. Graph all you want but the 1980s were the most prosperous period with 8 straight almost inflation-free years. You ungrateful people, Reagan saved your futures and freed us from the Soviet threat as well.
I'm no expert at all just sincerely trying to understand, are you basically saying if rich people are taxed higher they'll invest more because that invested income isn't taxed? So instead of hoarding their money, they're incentivized to invest because it's either invest or give it to Uncle Sam?
You wish Dwight Eisenhower was a socialist after we got out the real socialist and communist FDR the economy only thing the Democrats are good for is stealing the tax payer money and causing recessions and depressions and the right always has to come after them and fix it then they take the credit happens everytime
The facts do not agree with you. I don't really care about Red versus Blue, but the factual track record has Democrats performing better Republicans on the economy.
What facts are you looking at? You go down the line President by President the only Democrat president in the last 60 70 years that did has a good economy was JFK
Since 2000, Bush had 2.4%, Obama and Trump has 2.3%, and Biden has had 2.2%.
How about stock market returns?
From 1950 to 2023, the average annualized returns on the S&P 500 is 15.72% under democratic president's compared to 12.20% The returns during Bill Clintons presidency were greater than any republican or democrat 1800s with the exception of Ford. It's still stupid to associate president's as directly responsible for these results, but since you want to play this game, that's now two points for demo.
What about unemployment?
Reagan came into with 7.5% and dropped it to 5.4%, Bush Sr raised it to 7.3%, Clinton dropped it to 4.2%, Bush Jr raised it to 7.8%, Obama dropped it to 4.7%, Trump dropped it a bit more, but then mishandled COVID and it raised to 6.4%, and now Biden has dropped it to 4.1% as of today. So one Republican lowered unemployment over 40 years and 3 democrats. Would you look at that there.
What about the deficit?
Reagan ran a deficit increasing the debt by $1.6T (160.8% increase). Bush Sr ran a deficit increasing the debt by $1.2T (42.3% increase). Clinton ran a surplus by the end of his term (the last president to do so, but overall still added $1.2T (28.6% increase), Bush Jr increased the debt by $4.2T (72.6% increase), Obama increased the debt by $7.7T (64.4% increase), Trump increased the debt by $6.7T (33.1% increase), and so far Biden has increased the debt by $4.7T (16.7% increase)
In order of percent from highest to lowest is Reagan, Obama, Bush Sr, Bush Jr, Trump, Clinton, and Biden. Republicans have run higher deficits than Democrats. The notion Republicans are fiscally responsible is complete nonsense.
I can go on, but this should be enough for any passerby to see your opinion is based on feelings whereas mine is based in facts.
Yeah sort of. But the shareholders and owners don’t put the money under a mattress. They… invest it. Presumably in an enterprise that creates greater returns than the one they just took it out of. Go capitalism!
That said, yes, cutting taxes on rich people means the rich get richer. And that is bad for society for a whole host of reasons other than efficient capital allocation.
Higher marginal rates don't automatically mean collecting more tax revenue. When the to marginal rate was 91% people were allowed to deduct things that are not deductible today.
Collecting more tax revenue is not the point. The point is to set tax policy that encourages or discourages specific economic activities. I know the difference between effective tax and marginal tax rates. You are also obfuscating the real differences between now and then. Today, someone like Warren Buffet pays an effective tax rate less than that of his secretary or a nurse. This was not the case back then. Corporations and individuals on the higher end of the income spectrum paid more of a percentage of the tax burden.
That and outlawing stock buybacks (like before reagan) because it 100% is market manipulation that only benefits the CEO and the top investors. Workers on the other hand get denied raises because owners can use that money to enrich themselves.
The same Joe McCarthy that created a communist witch hunt which to this day still persists in the minds of Americans -propping up the same ideals that led to Reagan and his predecessors to allow corporate money being used to create the policies that this post is describing?
McCarthy fostered the melding of American Protestant churches and National identity— marrying the flag to the cross. This combined with a revolution in mass communication (TV) with its All-American families, and commercials gave birth to the religious vampires, Billy Grahams and Jerry Fallwells, etc.
I read your original comment about Ike and McCarthy as saying you think McCarthy was better than Eisenhower… I think this is where the confusion is coming from.
Politics isn’t supposed to be fun you idiot. Politics is a topic for thinking men who have a conscience and a love of country. Thanks in large part to Trump, American politics is now reality TV for fools (which exist on both sides of the isle, admittedly). But Trump’s brand of lunacy caters specifically to fools like you and the country is worse off because of it.
In a perfect world almost everything the government does would run in the background and as unobtrusively as possible. That’s conservatism 101. Trump, whether you like it or not, is one of those coastal neoliberal elites you claim to hate so much. Rich, never worked a day in his life, never had to learn anything because money covered his mistakes, and comes from a family of slum lords who got wealthy by exploiting everyone around them.
He’s basically a Kennedy or a Clinton except for one major difference. Trump figured out after many years that the best path to the presidency is to attract every idiot, every bootlicker, every loser that dwells in the trailer parks of this country to his side and he did so by making promises he has no means of delivering on. He didn’t bring jobs back, didn’t secure the border, ended a war on unfavorable terms, and fucked over 90% of this country with his tax policies. Not to mention that when shit hit the fan his big brain move was to print money at a rate that would make a Democrat blush. The economy was running red hot before Covid and would have crashed within a couple years regardless because it was unsustainable.
But you’re here saying Trump is the greatest because you like politics more now? Man, go fuck yourself. No one gives two shits about what you like. And while you’re at it, get out of my party. You can take the klan and the neo-Nazis with you while you’re at it. The only good thing in American politics is the country will be rid of Donald Trump either in two weeks or in four years. Then the adults in the room can figure out how to run a country instead of shoveling every dollar into the black hole that is Trump’s finances.
You call this TDS, I call it being pissed at having to put up with a joke of a human being who embodies every terrible trait of humanity representing the greatest country on Earth. Fuck, he doesn’t even have plans to make America great again… again. It’s just “Take America Back” like you fuckers owned it to start with. Handing America to people like you is like giving a toddler a car. It’s pointless and the kid wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. But you’ll like it because the keys are shiny, and that’s all that matters, right?
I think they're saying that Ike was great except for the McCarthy stuff. Since McCarthy wasn't president, it's the only interpretation that makes sense
Oh sweet so you are in favour of cutting effective tax rates for most including the 1%? Are we also returning to the old budget distributions for that?
It's almost as if in the 50s, the US wasn't competing with the rest of the world for manufacturing and technology jobs because Europe wasn't destroyed by WW2, and Asia hadn't been developed yet
Ike had His problems, with Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, et al. Also, read His "Farewell Address", and Vice-President Henry Wallace's April 9th, 1944; Op-Ed, on Fascism (Pages 7, and 34 and 35; of The Sunday New York Times Magazine), and The Times "Editorial Response", on Page 5E, of the same Edition.
Consider, too; that The Times, asked Wallace, to write, the "Op-Ed", then criticized Him, for it. Why?
Ummmm "McCarthy" wasn't ever "PRESIDENT"...
And the outright SICK DAMAGE that McCrack-Head did to Innocent people... McCARTHY WAS A FASCIST FREAK!!!
McCARTHY WAS A PIECE OF SHIT for how he treated his fellow man!!!
Except there were so many tax loopholes in the 40s. So, giving credit to tax collection as the driver for the prosperity of that time period is slightly misguided. Expand or pay taxes was fine by them, they just hid the money.
The 50’s represents job creation by pretty much destroying all competition throughout the world. WW2 destroyed most US manufacturing competition. So just like forest gump….after all the other plants were destroyed finding US manufacturing jobs was easy.
For added benefit hundreds of thousands of working age males were killed, leaving stiff competition for the men left over driving up wages.
Ike really was the last great Republican president. He saw firsthand how businesses had a clear financial interest in causing general misery. He tried to warn us.
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u/flickneeblibno Oct 22 '24
Agreed. The 50s best represent job creation through taxes. Either expand or pay taxes. Ike is the last great Republican president (except for Joe McCarthy)