The state of the economy has been years in the making. As many as 30 to 40 years in the making. To have all these simple arguments is really not only non production, but many comments are disingenious when you consider the personal tax rate prior to Reagan was over 70%. Prior to that you never had CEO's or Hedge fund managers taking home over 20 to 30 million dollars a year. You had protections that benefited companies to keep jobs here in this country. Trade agreements that made it easier to allow corporations to take jobs overseas and the income made by those companies overseas aren't taxed by the US like they are by every other industrialized nation in the world.
In many ways, the symtoms which took years to developed are being overlooked by the rhetoric that is printed in papers/online or spoken on TV as Gospel. YOu have to wonder why that is the case. Either some really educated americans are being hoodwinked or it is a case of extreme naiveity to believe that this is normal and those that aren't at fault are easiest to blame for it. When those that are at fault are the same one's that most americans support whole hardedly because they look so well when they tell bold face lies on Televison.
The boob tube has taken reality TV to the masses to such an extent where they take lies and nonsense as truth and use the internet to spread it. In the future such a phenomon will be discussed in History classes as a time when educated people overlooked history and allowed their ability to think and reason to be co-opted.
Originally Posted by SOULMANIKE
yes there was a 70% tax rate, i know all about it. it applied mostly to unearned income, calculations were made as to what the income from capital was as used in a given business to determine a capital portion and an earned portion as "earned income" paid a lower rate.
but at the same time (before Reagan), there were depreciation schedules on luxury automobiles that allowed a huge percentage of its cost to be deducted in the year of purchase, there was investment tax credits on those cars which reduced tax by ten percent of the purchase of those same luxury cars, there were complete write offs on meal and entertainment (not limited to 50%), there was no "listed property" rules, there were full tax deductions on just about all forms of interest including credit card interest, there were no limits on business expenses such as the 2% threshold, there were no rules regarding material participation in deducting business "losses" such as ranches or just investments in oil and gas or real estate or limited partnerships such as boat tenders or supply ships that made you money just on tax savings, all designed mostly to screw uncle sam. so you have less than superior knowledge perhaps. No one paid 70%, that was the rate, but i assure you, only idiots paid it, people spent their time and money so arranging their affairs as to defeat tax.
i worked for a man in the mid seventies, who owned casinos in vegas and oil and gas interests in texas, he was a multi millionaire, and i know he paid no taxes, he drilled them away.
we have gone through many iterations and changes in the tax code since Reagan, mostly in attempts to simplify it, make it "fairer" and in so doing we took out about 50% of the people from paying tax, which i think is a mistake.
Reagan came in and saw all that and did away with the write offs for the most part and then lowered the tax rates. in so doing, there was a dislocation in values, as real estate values came down because the tax savings werent the same, tax rules became much more onerous, oil and gas drilling was affected, and low and behold, tax receipts rose. maybe some of what he did was a shock to the system and made losers out of previously smart people. and so how is it that the tax receipts rose, did the poor pay them?
and induced cognitive dissonance.....
