3 ms·

If you're going to criticize someone else's source, you really should have something better than your personal recollection of the 80s to base it on. Try this:

• hga 16y ago
  That's not useful for the purposes of my discussion of the '80s and '90s, which was a narrative of the shape of the changes without specific figures except for the starting ones for Reagan (where I seem to have been off by 5% for unearned income). As the table itself notes, it's grossly oversimplified (I would say to the point of uselessness, at least for comparison with today's tax regime) and I'd add that it obviously doesn't go into the critical (and all too common) changes in capital gains taxation. Or how inflation drastically changed effective tax rates for many families as it made the personal exemption more a historical curiosity than an effective tax policy for, say, the middle class. As for pay as you go, sure, but not too relevant in an era where Federal spending is generating annual deficits of a trillion dollars this year and last as of about now (http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/107669-deficit-hits-1-trillion-in-june-for-second-straight-year http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/107669-deficit-...), three months before the end of the Federal fiscal year. It's hard to imagine any level or type of tolerable taxation that could cover that. Anyway, as I said, I'm willing to fact check myself and look up numbers.