Even back in the 1950's the rich used a huge number of tax breaks and loopholes to cut that number by well over 50% with most paying less than 40%. That is still MUCH more than they pay today. Now they hide huge amounts of money offshore. They grow much richer from stock buybacks. https://bit.ly/4iFsfQD
I’d like to see that for five years. Just five years. I’m sure people smarter than me would look at that and crunch the numbers. Stating at 85%, After five years it would then go down to 45% and after another five years down to 35%. 15 years would be my Project 2045 Plan.
To be clear. That’s on income equivalent to anything over $3 million in today’s money. When the right argues against this they seem to forget that fact
And there were so many human problems with that time! Racism, sexism, and all that entailed. I grew up in the 50's 60's - white - but a girl with very limited options. I can only imagine the challenges of being that and also a POC. WE WILL NOT GO BACK, NO MATTER WHAT THIS HORRIBLE GROUP WANTS.
There’s no reason we can’t take the best of that time period and leave behind the worst of it. I remember the misogyny well and I wasn’t born until the 60’s. It was still bad in the 70’s, but not as bad as it had been.
I agree with taking the best - high taxes on the rich, quality roads, quality education etc. I think the woman was reaching for that...shame on us for not ALL following her!
Well the only ones that really want to go back to that time are whiney white men. Because I can guaranfuckingtee it damn sure isn’t women or people of color.
Now it is in reverse order the workers pay the most tax and reap the least benefits whilst the rich pay the lesser tax and reap the big benefits.
People then wonder why everything is going down the gurgler, the drain
That’s overstating it. The fifties was a time when we happily invested in US. We just never went farther than white male US. Mad Men got really mad and really scared when women and nonwhites asked for equal opportunity.
Perhaps that income bracket should be paying the Reagan tax rate, without deductions. That's how Clinton was able to produce a surplus. It's a start. They can still be millionaires.
And look what happened with Japan as well as China and Taiwan, for one generation until 1975, anything made there was labelled as cheap and worthless, a store-bought joke
Great idea. Now tell me how it's possible to make that happen when you have a system where billionaires control politics? How would you pass the legislation when the people who create and pass legislation are owned by the super rich?
In the UK people hark back to the 60s - during Harold Wilson's time as Prime Minister 1964-70 and 74-79, the top rate of income tax reached 98% for investment income and 83% for earned income. The Beatles even wrote the song "Taxman" in 1966, which was a protest against a 95% rate
History is quite a lesson. We just need to read a bit more. And all those corporations invested back into their companies and workers to take advantage of the tax breaks. No one ever paid those rates. Now they take their profits and ship the $ and jobs offshore. We get shit now. They are hoarders.
I haven't seen any data points on white female voters from the last election. I know a disturbing % voted for him, but I don't think it would have been close to a majority. And let's face it, a disturbing % of all demographics voted for him.
I’m surprised we’re still talking about cons wanting to go back to “the 50’s”, bc the hardcores have wanted the guilded age of the late 1800’s for 3-4 decades and have been openly talking about taking away child labor/civil and women’s rights for that much time. The 1950’s were way better.
Very few, if any, paid that rate. You got huge deductions for creation of infrastructure & good works in your community. The difference between then & now is that you performed first, then got the deductions. Now just tell Congress you are thinking about it and you get the deductions ahead of time.
Exactly. The beginning of the end started with Reagan. His administration was the start of a cancer we’ve been fighting ever since — the biggest challenge being getting people to acknowledge the sickness so it could be cured.
I yelled thi to the rafters for years hell in the 70's it was 78% all the way until Reagan got together and motivated the racist and then dropped the corporate tax rate to around 38%. SMFH at dumbass hillbillies who voted for racist shit instead of making things better for everyone
This is precisely why the best system is a Capitalist/Socialist hybrid. Right now in the U.S., the wealth gap has grown too big - it’s become an Oligarchy or Plutocracy & the class war is underway. The pendulum has swung too far!
The problem with the chart is when you chart in the billionaires the “rich” bar on this graph shoots so high it doesn’t fit on this graphs or several more graphs stacked on top of it. The wealth gap grows by the day.
Yeah, I had a crazy thought, when black folk move in the neighborhood, white folk move out. Now that blacks are participating in the economy more, is that why whites are needlessly destroying the economy? Because *some* black folk are finally getting somewhere?
I don’t wanna believe it, but wouldn’t a recession/depression, losing their jobs/income, be a great way to claw that wealth back from those black folk? Many who work for the federal government have middle income and have nice homes to lose—how is this not a race attack on some or all levels?!
It takes a particularly underdeveloped understanding of the world to believe you can't give away access and opportunity without taking it from someone because of the stupid enforced scarcity built into the fabric of capitalism. They can't charge you for air till there's no safe air left to breathe
Which few paid due to loopholes and deductions. That prosperity also didn't exist. More Americans lived in poverty than today, including white Americans. And segregation was the standard keeping non-whites poorer, while making poor whites struggling feeling superior. It sucked in so many ways.
Not in the 1950s, but closer to 1850! Cocaine, and trace amounts at that, were only in it for a very short time back when it came out in the 19th Century.
Thank you for letting me know. I guess I must have just heard that so many times I just thought it was true. I stand corrected. Barbiturates, amphetamines and tranquilizers were the actual drugs of choice in the 50's. I'm not willing to go that far for more energy or sleep. 😉
I know right?!?! My poor husband had childhood epilepsy and they gave him barbiturates. The medicine prescribed regularly back then was mind blowing. 🤦♀️
Yeah and we had the Marshall plan and we’re sending products all over the world to rebuild after the war. That stimulus wasn’t going to last forever but the leaders of the time pretended that it would.
It's also worth remembering that these years followed a worldwide war, with all the terrible material destruction and millions of victims - dead, wounded, disabled and homeless - that this implies.
I suspect the rich are going to have to actually start their proper share & corrupt ppl will have to face real consequences OR it might be time to just publish the paper on this failed "experiment"
Our US Constitution was created in a day when a large % of the population had one main concern - make it to tomorrow by the sweat of our brow (slavery aside). Few had any real time to devote to the governance - that fell to the generationally wealthy, and common man had to count on their benevolence
Which, when it didn't work like that - was taken care of by the lack of communication. Once the world became small (Walt Disney age) the curtains got pulled back on the inherent faults.
A few costs are crushing the middle class. Healthcare (even on the aca the marketplace), education (property taxes and college) and retirement (mostly social security taxes). All these costs used to be shouldered more by our employers. At least Healthcare and pensions were.
Dollar per dollar, inflation adjusted, the median income is close to the same (around 50 grand, 70 grand for a family. It's not the pay, it's not the tax policy. It's that things like education and healthcare are multiple times more expensive than they were, and employers stopped paying those bills.
Correlation does not mean causation. When adjusted for inflation the US taxes more, and spends more, than it ever did in the 50s. 85 percent of federal taxes are paid by the top 20 percent of earners. And absolutely no one paid those high rates. Loopholes abounded in the 50s. Most people paid about
40 percent or so after all the loopholes. Tax policy did not cause prosperity. Most Americans were not prosperous before WWII, we were stuck in a depression and before that most families were tenant farmers or low paid industrial workers. WWII caused the prosperity.
Tax policy wasn't the cause of the boom, but it did cause better distribution. If the post WW2 industry boom happened today it wouldn't have the same effect because most of the money would end up in the pockets of the top 0.1%
I remember reading Gore Vidal’s biography where he talked about how much he was taxed when he made a lot on a book sale. I remember thinking that this is how Eisenhower was able to build the interstate highway system…
That prosperity was largely only for white men.
Few women and fewer black and brown people experienced that prosperity.
Return to 1950s means going back to pre-Civil Rights in the US.
It was also a time of segregation and limited rights for women and LGBTQ+ people. It was also a time of white male dominance. It’s not just about the taxes.
Taxes put $ in the hands of the government to build the interstate highways and dams. Wonderful!
However, it didn’t put a penny in the bank for the common people and was not what let a single family earner afford a starter home—that was unions.
You made an argument that was bullshit that somehow government infrastructures spending doesn't make it into the pockets of the poor. Don't misunderstand I'm pro-union but we'd all be better off with a government that was pro labor.
Um? No. I did not make that claim. :-) in fact—to the high tax I said Wonderful. I’m all for it—But, please, do go on. It’s seemingly a requirement of the internet.
Whatever I'm not interested in fighting over details when it sounds like we largely agree while the Fash are tearing the country apart, I'll credit any misunderstanding to the 300 character limit.
Peace
Does the "Chicken Little" complex
get stronger the richer a person becomes.
Here is some data to show US wellbeing.
Is the last one in trouble? https://www.textbooksfree.org/Wellbeing.htm
Unions take the credit for this. Only about 9% of workers participated in unions last year versus 20% in the early 80s. Quality of life plummeted without unions. Blame Ronnie Reagan for part of this.
I don't know, 78% tax on corporations and 1%ers will give Maga what they want. Then throw a M4A for me and the progressive branch. Problems almost solved
When I tell my ReThug friends this FACT, they are speechless and change the subject. Even under Republican Nixon they were 70%!
No one making under $1M a year should pay more than 1/2 their earnings to the Government. It stifles incentive and innovation.
$10M plus? 60% and close the damn loopholes!
And the unpaid house keeping and childcare of women (room and board I guess) and no equal employment laws and racial discrimination which meant a lot of labour was very under paid. And free pollution too!
this is exactly why european companies cant compete with us companies because they actually pay tax over here.
The general corporate tax in 2023 is approximately 22 percent of taxable income.
Mærsk/Maersk paid in tax, which corresponds to approximately 6.3 billion.
Novo Holdings and Kirkbi paid respectively 8.2 billion. DKK and 4.2 billion. DKK in corporate tax in 2021, which corresponds to almost 22 percent of both companies' taxable income.
I can easily remember, because it wasn't that long ago, that the average salary of an EU CEO of a major company was about 1M€/year. And that was considered generous.
And we don't even need to tax anybody near that far.
We just need everybody to pay their fair share unless they are under the poverty line, to stop allowing corporate welfare, and to make sure that the centi-millionaires and billionaires pay their part as well.
Because Reagan has incredulously become somewhat of a national saint, and any criticism of his legacy is considered unamerican. But reaganomics is the sole reason why the US went down that path that now has ended with Trump, and Dems need to say it out loud.
💯 Regan was the beginning of the end, he defined the anti-government conversation. every good thing Dems try to do, they call socialist/comm to scare the population away from good ideas. Take that MO farmer, doesn’t even know to blame Trump for clawing back his grant, just blames “the government”!
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People then wonder why everything is going down the gurgler, the drain
By 1980, the roar of the east had begun
*if you were white
*if you were male
*if you were straight
*if you were rich
If you miss this, you were probably a piece of shit, too.
Republicans were completely wrong about everything this whole time. Except for Eisenhower.
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If we believe there was no interference.
In 2025 the CEOs get 100–1000 times the average wage of the workers and much more with bonuses and shares.
This lasted until the 1958 recession
91% tax rate is excessive- but today’s new oligarchy is a whole nother story
The tax rate is irrelevant for them, they don’t pay any anyway
its jolly good btw 😉
Dansk Coladrik was founded in 1959 to compete with the American brands before they hit the Danish markets, especially Coca-Cola.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolly_Cola
Tax American Billionaires Again
Remove all Traitors, co conspirators and enablers!!
Trump and his treasonous crew are destroying our country!!
March 29 Tesla Takedown
April 5 protest 50501
Few women and fewer black and brown people experienced that prosperity.
Return to 1950s means going back to pre-Civil Rights in the US.
However, it didn’t put a penny in the bank for the common people and was not what let a single family earner afford a starter home—that was unions.
But you found an argument/objection somehow. Congratulations. It’s a requirement of the internet. :-)
Peace
get stronger the richer a person becomes.
Here is some data to show US wellbeing.
Is the last one in trouble?
https://www.textbooksfree.org/Wellbeing.htm
No one making under $1M a year should pay more than 1/2 their earnings to the Government. It stifles incentive and innovation.
$10M plus? 60% and close the damn loopholes!
The general corporate tax in 2023 is approximately 22 percent of taxable income.
Mærsk/Maersk paid in tax, which corresponds to approximately 6.3 billion.
Putin said he wants to go back to 1917.
Supreme Court killed that.
We just need everybody to pay their fair share unless they are under the poverty line, to stop allowing corporate welfare, and to make sure that the centi-millionaires and billionaires pay their part as well.
Simple.
Why do we never hear Republicans working to go back to that?
THERE IS NO TRICKLE DOWN.
They are keeping the money. Need wedding gifts for Bezos and his blowup doll.