If exorbitant tax breaks for the rich improve the economy, raise wages, and create more jobs, What Happened?
Tax rates for the super wealthy went from 90% during WWII to 70% after the War, into the twenties during Reagan, and then cut yet another six percent under Bush W.
2009-07-18T07:14:47Z
The comically naïve view of trickle down economics is that we can trust that the wisdom of the rich about the continued financial security of the stock market, and fair leading practices will naturally lead them to act in the best interests of that very economy that supports their wealth, and will rationally act ethically, with concern for the other players in the capitalistic gain game. What we really saw was exactly what you describe Eric. Even our Trickle-down Gru, Alan Greenspan, admitted that there was a “flaw” in this beloved model. He said he felt “shocked disbelief” that ”the self-interest of these people didn’t automatically lead them to be wise honest and protective..” Perhaps Tickle-up economics from the poor, or Trickle-out from the middle class might work better.
Anonymous2009-07-12T13:38:31Z
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exactly what they wanted to happen, scream about socialism, promote a dream (leave the capitalists alone and everything will be alright), cut rich peoples taxes so it can trickle down (somebodies got to put gas in that ferrari), and presto--the rich get richer and the poor get poorer ( who could have seen that coming?)
The reason why we should raise tax on the rich is to give poor people and the working class a hand so they can start to buy things and stimulate our economy and create jobs. In order for us to give the working class tax deduction without raising the deficit; it has got to come from a demographic (someone has to pay for it).
What happened was the poor were promised advancement to the middle class at the expense of the rich, lessening the burden for the middle class, all in hopes that everyone can live close to the rich. The only problem is that when you raise taxes in a bracket system, you reduce the incentive to make more money so the rich work less to be in a bracket of lower tax rate (the overall effect brings home more money), and you increase incentives for those rich enough to afford accountants and tax lawyers and to payoff bureaucrat's and congressmen and virtually no taxes are collected.
Now that fewer tax dollars are collected from the rich, the only way to pay the increasing bills to tax the middle class. So what really happens is the rich get richer but the poor get more moderate- not poorer. It's the middle class who gets poorer (though not as poor as the lower class).
The good news is yo can throw all of this away. It's all moral theories of politics. Free market capitalism (FMC) is NOT a moral theory (who deserves what money), it's a scientific one.
FMC is simply a way of how can an economy optimize itself with minimal gov. interference.
Now I bet yo if people were smart enough not to buy things from "greedy" oil tycoons and environmental demons and knew how to efficiently allocate their funds towards useful things like education or bank CDs and not fancy cars and oversized suburban homes, then we wouldn't need the government to make decisions for us.
If we were all taxed the same low rate, we could make our choices whether it's failure or success and not have to fail in order to pay for someone else's success.
This moral theory is called individualism, the ideal that you make your own success and not have the government impede that on you. Free market capitalism is often mistaken for it, but I got news for you- take any American politics 101 and you'll learn that the US is a nation inspired by individualism- a form of freedom much deeper than what we fool ourselves to believe.
Rich having higher tax breaks is fairer because the income distribution has a low standard deviation. However having them too high will discourage the rich from living there thus the government will miss out on their tax. Yes Maggie Thatcher did cut taxes on the rich but because of this the economy grew. It's unfair but efficient.
In NY, they instituted what amounted to a tax on students of the public universities, mid-year. I paid $300 more for my spring semester than for the fall. $270 of that money went to the state, and $30 went to the college.
If the state had restored income taxes on the wealthiest 5% of the population to their earlier levels, this tax on working-class students wouldn't have been necessary.
I guess it's more politically feasible to avoid the word "tax" unless it's followed by "break."