precisely. the distribution of wealth is a more important indicator of economic health than simply looking at the national debt or total tax revenues. imo we need to increase taxes on the ultra rich, not because we need to reduce the deficit but because taxes prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth (and the resulting regulatory capture epitomized by modern American oligarchy).
stopdropandprole
joined 9 months ago
Congress dropped the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% and gained more tax revenue when it was set to 70%.
anyone have a source for this claim of increased revenue? if so, was it just a temporary effect with longer term structural implications? besides, wouldn't the solution to evasion have been increased enforcement? taxes aren't just about revenue, they're a redistributive force in the economy and arguably their main purpose isn't to fund the government but to prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth and reduce inequality.
your argument falls flat upon historical analysis. if high tax rates were bad, and lowering them 'fixed it' then explain all the massive social benefits from 1940-1980:
Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. this all happened before Reagan and coincide with top marginal rates between 50-95 percent.
inequality has skyrocketed since Reagan and the policies which dismantled new dealism. I hate the Democrats who helped facilitate the rise in inequality and the gutting of social welfare programs (Clinton especially) but to claim that reducing the top marginal rates was an unequivocal good thing is a pretty extreme narrowly focused claim. those who say so based on a loosely held 'I've done the math' argument are merely using a rhetorical gotchya - it's not a sufficient socioeconomic historically supportable argument. if it was, show me all the benefits that increased tax revenue provided from 1990-present. I'll wait.
low tax rates are precisely how we got to people like Trump, Musk, Buffet, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Thiel and the incredible rise in number of hundred millionaires and billionaires who are now destroying our social safety nets even more so they can flatter their egos and act out middle aged divorced guy power fantasies.
inequality is why people can't afford things and is presently the single biggest problem of our society. taxes do make a difference in combatting that. Regean had a role in creating this system, whether you like it or not.
the power to tax is the power to destroy. we build prosperity by keeping oligarchs in check.
John McCain and Hillary Clinton (yes, her) are more responsible for the bill that hand delivered gave us Citizens United to the supreme court than anyone in the DNC (which doesn't draft legislation, they mostly just~~take bribes~~ fundraise for pro-corporate/pro-Israel lobbies and suppress progressives and independents.)
they're responsible for crafting immensely unpopular platform after platform, such as killing single payer healthcare, enabling a half senile Biden campaign, sabotaged the progressives and Bernie (twice), and gave us fucktards Schumer and Pelosi who are among the most ineffectual hated politicians in America.
please stop trolling this "vote for DNC to defeat fascism" nonsense. THEY HAD 8 YEARS TO PREPARE A TACTICAL RESPONSE TO TRUMPISM AND YET HERE WE ARE.
once these assholes are dead by whatever means necessary, we can solve the whole Social Security problem (and many others) by restoring top marginal rates to the levels that built a strong safety net and prevented runaway wealth accumulation in the 1%
during WWII the wealthiest paid between 80-95%. from the New Deal until Reagan destroyed the country in the 80s, top rates were well above 50 percent.
Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. we did it by keeping oligarchs in check. in a strictly enforced progressively tiered system, top marginal tax prevents the obscene accumulation of wealth
it's all about how the regulations are designed... for the benefit of corporations? or regular people?
for example, there could easily be rules placing caps on the amount of advertising that's allowed on any given platform. no fucking way now the government will ever put that cat back in the bag now that the 20 percent of GDP comes from tech monopolies fueled by advertisements.
great analysis. worth the time to finish and absorb. it's not enough for them to dismantle "woke capitalism", they are reshaping the notions of what the state is and using it to clear the way for a new economic order which a select few capitalists control.
when the state has become so captured by private interests, whoever controls the state can use it to carve out their own fiefdoms. this may be the beginning of an era where cabals of elites take turns scorching the earth, vying for supremacy using government as a bludgeon against each other.
It is becoming clearer by the day that the war on “woke capitalism” was more than just theater. Trump’s minions really are prepared to take down whole economic sectors—the very summits of neoliberal capitalism—to elevate their own faction of private investment partners, company founders, and controlling shareholders.
How far the war on “woke capitalism” can be pursued without provoking an all-out recession (or intra-capitalist revolt) remains to be seen. What we can be sure of, however, is that Trump’s business allies will be spared the DOGE austerity treatment. As Musk’s raid on the Treasury and Trump’s attempts to interfere with the Federal Reserve make clear, libertarians don’t actually want to abolish the state, much less the massive fiscal and monetary powers embodied in the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Instead, they want to drastically narrow the scope of beneficiaries to a small group of ultrawealthy private capitalists (company founders or controlling owners) and private fund managers in the world of crypto, security, real estate, and fossil fuels. This group of people is so small that we know their names; their faces are literally stamped onto their own privately issued coins, which will no doubt require propping up by the Federal Reserve in due course. Rarely has capitalist power been so personal, yet so massively inflated by the public purse.
as social security and welfare are dismantled before our eyes (across both Dem and GOP administrations), homelessness will certainly rise especially among the elderly. i for one won't let my parents die in the street but caring for them full time means never having time or money to have children of my own.
capitalism has taken so much from us.
not to mention the millions of man hours wasted responding to all these contradictory instructions across every federal office - having meetings, writing memos, discussing communication plans, notifying private partners and businesses, travel cancellations, etc etc etc...
in other words, tens of millions of taxpayers dollars in LOST PRODUCTIVITY.... all because a petulant incompetent nazi oligarch thinks he knows better how the entire government should be run.
you do understand how circular and self defeating your analysis is, right?
you say the problem is not punishing greed. okay. let's follow your last sentence to it's logical conclusion.... how exactly (in today's corporate controlled society) would we punish greed? keeping in mind, greed at the level of corporations is inarguably the single most salient and damaging type of greed.
could the answer have anything to do with say, corporations?
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
I was being a little tongue in cheek about Hillary's role, mostly speaking to the fact that her desire to seek power endlessly and run for president against Obama in '08, is what led to the creation of the eponymous film which was the basis for Citizens United filing a suit in court. it might have happened anyway, eventually, but it's not widely appreciated how much harm she and the DNC have done to our political culture, including losing to Trump so spectacularly in '16.
every significant Democrat has said they're opposed to Citizens United... none of them have actually done anything to accomplish overturning it. actions speak louder than words. same with Roe v Wade, they had decades to codify it and failed.
my whole point is not about what they oppose or support, it's that they're ineffectual in either direction. they routinely fail at shaking up the system and manipulating the courts in favor of the 99% of Americans who they claim to support. meanwhile the GOP runs roughshod over jurisprudence and the courts and civil liberties. Dems are still better than GOP by miles and miles, but nowhere near adequate as an opposition political party.