5 ms·

There was a time when one could. The minimum wage was originally put in place to make sure a single wage earner could support a family.

PopsiclePete 8y ago
A time when unions were strong, when the 1% were taxed at ~90% and when "social security" and "pensions" were not evil words. I feel zero sympathy for Americans and for the utter clusterfuck of misery that awaits them over the next 20 years. This is just the beginning.
- pofilat 8y ago
  There never was a 90% tax rate. That was a marginal rate, and there were massive deductions.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Then name those massive deductions. Edit: or just drive by downvote, I guess.
    - crooked-v 8y ago
      You should expect people to downvote when you demand information you could get yourself just by skimming Wikipedia articles.
      - monocasa 8y ago
        I asked about deductions, not just the marginal rate. That's not covered in the wikipedia articles.
    - pofilat 8y ago
      From the 1950s, when the marginal rate was >90%: https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-rich-1950-not-high/ https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-rich-1950-not-high/ > per the Piketty, Saez, and Zucman data ... The average tax rate on the 0.1 percent highest-income Americans was 50.6 percent in the 1950s, compared to 39.8 percent today. From 1979 onward: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/effective_tax_rates2004.pdf http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/... Highest effective tax rate, before Reagan's reforms, was 37% of the income of the top 1%
      - monocasa 8y ago
        I asked about the deductions, not just the marginal rate. My understanding is it matched what's more typical in Japanese C-levels these days. You don't have a crazy salary, but your car is a company car, the company has a deal with the good schools to cover tuition for your kids, you don't pay for breakfast, or lunch ever because you'd be at the office so the company handles it, etc. Edit: Guys, there's several ways to being down the marginal rate, deductions are only one of them.
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      One of the first Google results. https://mises.org/library/good-ol-days-when-tax-rates-were-90-percent https://mises.org/library/good-ol-days-when-tax-rates-were-9... In a nutshell, most expenses that businesses can still deduct were once deductible by individuals, the largest (by dollars) being interest deductions for any type of loan.
      - monocasa 8y ago
        I mean, this is why I don't look to the Mises Institute for real economic analysis. This is blog post is case in point, they base the whole idea of the deductions reducing the marginal rate on one anonymous former accountant, interspersed with bitching about 'liberals'. EDIT: I mean, their charts are blatantly mislabeled (even against their argument), showing a top marginal rate of over 90%. These people are just incompetent.
        gamblor956 8y ago
        The highest marginal rate was 94% during WWII. So it sounds like the incompetent one is...you... And I'm not citing the Mises Institute for economic analysis, I'm citing it as one of the many dozen potential resources you could have looked at for the historical information you were asking for, namely the deductions that were lost in the 1986 tax reform.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- qaq 8y ago
  Would you name a country where 1% is taxed @ 90%? and what exactly would it acomplish so a google eng. would suddenly have 30-40K after tax income with 2 mil mortage that would really help make things right.
  - PopsiclePete 8y ago
    Google engineers are not the top whatever-percent that needs to be taxed like that, no. It's mostly the idle billionaire class. Warren Buffet agrees with me, FWIW.
    - qaq 8y ago
      What does it have to do with 1%? there are about 600 billionaires in US so they are like what 0.000001%?
      - sokoloff 8y ago
        >> 0.000001%? No, 0.000184% (or 0.0000018, a factor of >180 different)
  - rconti 8y ago
    Marginal tax rates on very high earners were 90% in the US. https://www.theblaze.com/contributions/the-myth-of-the-90-percent-tax-rate https://www.theblaze.com/contributions/the-myth-of-the-90-pe...
  - abalone 8y ago
    That exaggerates how much they’d be taxed, but generally speaking such governments provide more public services (eg health care, quality education) and also build housing. Even in the USA, HUD used to have a bigger budget than the department of defense.
- sctb 8y ago
  Could you please stop with the unsubstantive flamewar comments? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dsr_ 8y ago
"To better understand how rents and affordability have changed over time, Apartment List analyzed Census data from 1960 - 2014. We find that inflation-adjusted rents have risen by 64%, but real household incomes only increased by 18%." -- https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-1960/ https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-... The graph lower down on the page is informative, too: only in Las Vegas and Austin did the median rent increase equally to the change in median renter income. In every other urban area, the rent went up faster.
pofilat 8y ago
Source for that claim? Minimum wage has been $4-10/hr (inflation adjusted) throughout its history in USA; only about as high for the single-person poverty level ($6/hr for single, $10/hr equivalent for a family of 3) https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-of-minimum-wage/ https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-of-minimum-wage/
- monocasa 8y ago
  Rent and home values have gone up far faster.
  - cheald 8y ago
    So has the size of living spaces and the space allocation per person. https://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/05/25/the-size-of-a-home-the-year-you-were-born/3/ https://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/05/25/the-size-of-... That article puts the average living space sq ft/person at 233 sq ft (959 sq ft/home) in 1938, 387 sq ft/person (avg 1,289 sq ft/home) in 1960, and at 1,046 sq ft (2,657 sq ft/home) today. That is, since 1960, the average house size has risen 106%, while real rent has risen by 64% (https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-1960/ https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-...) since 1960. This would seem to suggest that today's real dollar buys more living space than real dollars past did, but that we're also demanding larger and larger housing. This is small comfort to the low-income earner looking for housing, of course, but it's nonsensical to expect real housing prices to remain static while the living space allocated to each home grows.
    - droidist2 8y ago
      I don't want a big space though, I just want it within an hour commute of my job. Who decided we wanted a few bigger spaces instead of more abundant smaller spaces?
      - philipkglass 8y ago
        When I bought my house 11 years ago, I could get an older small house or a 21st century house that was too big. I wanted a detached house but I don't need surplus space and I certainly don't want to deal with extra heating/cooling/cleaning/maintenance on that unneeded space. This was in an affordable mid-size town away from the coasts. I ended up buying a small house that was built in the 1940s. I still wish I could have got something with modern wiring and no lead paint, but the same compact size. I can't tell if people are really demanding larger homes over time (per cheald above) or if people who aren't custom-building are forced to pick from a size range that has offered fewer small houses over time.
gascan 8y ago
There still are places you could. Skimming Zillow, you can get a 2br in Ohio for ~$450/mo.

PopsiclePete 8y ago

A time when unions were strong, when the 1% were taxed at ~90% and when "social security" and "pensions" were not evil words. I feel zero sympathy for Americans and for the utter clusterfuck of misery that awaits them over the next 20 years. This is just the beginning.

pofilat 8y ago
There never was a 90% tax rate. That was a marginal rate, and there were massive deductions.
- monocasa 8y ago
  Then name those massive deductions. Edit: or just drive by downvote, I guess.
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    You should expect people to downvote when you demand information you could get yourself just by skimming Wikipedia articles.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      I asked about deductions, not just the marginal rate. That's not covered in the wikipedia articles.
  - pofilat 8y ago
    From the 1950s, when the marginal rate was >90%: https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-rich-1950-not-high/ https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-rich-1950-not-high/ > per the Piketty, Saez, and Zucman data ... The average tax rate on the 0.1 percent highest-income Americans was 50.6 percent in the 1950s, compared to 39.8 percent today. From 1979 onward: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/effective_tax_rates2004.pdf http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/... Highest effective tax rate, before Reagan's reforms, was 37% of the income of the top 1%
    - monocasa 8y ago
      I asked about the deductions, not just the marginal rate. My understanding is it matched what's more typical in Japanese C-levels these days. You don't have a crazy salary, but your car is a company car, the company has a deal with the good schools to cover tuition for your kids, you don't pay for breakfast, or lunch ever because you'd be at the office so the company handles it, etc. Edit: Guys, there's several ways to being down the marginal rate, deductions are only one of them.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    One of the first Google results. https://mises.org/library/good-ol-days-when-tax-rates-were-90-percent https://mises.org/library/good-ol-days-when-tax-rates-were-9... In a nutshell, most expenses that businesses can still deduct were once deductible by individuals, the largest (by dollars) being interest deductions for any type of loan.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      I mean, this is why I don't look to the Mises Institute for real economic analysis. This is blog post is case in point, they base the whole idea of the deductions reducing the marginal rate on one anonymous former accountant, interspersed with bitching about 'liberals'. EDIT: I mean, their charts are blatantly mislabeled (even against their argument), showing a top marginal rate of over 90%. These people are just incompetent.
      - gamblor956 8y ago
        The highest marginal rate was 94% during WWII. So it sounds like the incompetent one is...you... And I'm not citing the Mises Institute for economic analysis, I'm citing it as one of the many dozen potential resources you could have looked at for the historical information you were asking for, namely the deductions that were lost in the 1986 tax reform.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
qaq 8y ago
Would you name a country where 1% is taxed @ 90%? and what exactly would it acomplish so a google eng. would suddenly have 30-40K after tax income with 2 mil mortage that would really help make things right.
- PopsiclePete 8y ago
  Google engineers are not the top whatever-percent that needs to be taxed like that, no. It's mostly the idle billionaire class. Warren Buffet agrees with me, FWIW.
  - qaq 8y ago
    What does it have to do with 1%? there are about 600 billionaires in US so they are like what 0.000001%?
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      >> 0.000001%? No, 0.000184% (or 0.0000018, a factor of >180 different)
- rconti 8y ago
  Marginal tax rates on very high earners were 90% in the US. https://www.theblaze.com/contributions/the-myth-of-the-90-percent-tax-rate https://www.theblaze.com/contributions/the-myth-of-the-90-pe...
- abalone 8y ago
  That exaggerates how much they’d be taxed, but generally speaking such governments provide more public services (eg health care, quality education) and also build housing. Even in the USA, HUD used to have a bigger budget than the department of defense.
sctb 8y ago
Could you please stop with the unsubstantive flamewar comments? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dsr_ 8y ago

"To better understand how rents and affordability have changed over time, Apartment List analyzed Census data from 1960 - 2014. We find that inflation-adjusted rents have risen by 64%, but real household incomes only increased by 18%." -- https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-1960/ https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-... The graph lower down on the page is informative, too: only in Las Vegas and Austin did the median rent increase equally to the change in median renter income. In every other urban area, the rent went up faster.

pofilat 8y ago

Source for that claim? Minimum wage has been $4-10/hr (inflation adjusted) throughout its history in USA; only about as high for the single-person poverty level ($6/hr for single, $10/hr equivalent for a family of 3) https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-of-minimum-wage/ https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-of-minimum-wage/

monocasa 8y ago
Rent and home values have gone up far faster.
- cheald 8y ago
  So has the size of living spaces and the space allocation per person. https://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/05/25/the-size-of-a-home-the-year-you-were-born/3/ https://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/05/25/the-size-of-... That article puts the average living space sq ft/person at 233 sq ft (959 sq ft/home) in 1938, 387 sq ft/person (avg 1,289 sq ft/home) in 1960, and at 1,046 sq ft (2,657 sq ft/home) today. That is, since 1960, the average house size has risen 106%, while real rent has risen by 64% (https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-1960/ https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-...) since 1960. This would seem to suggest that today's real dollar buys more living space than real dollars past did, but that we're also demanding larger and larger housing. This is small comfort to the low-income earner looking for housing, of course, but it's nonsensical to expect real housing prices to remain static while the living space allocated to each home grows.
  - droidist2 8y ago
    I don't want a big space though, I just want it within an hour commute of my job. Who decided we wanted a few bigger spaces instead of more abundant smaller spaces?
    - philipkglass 8y ago
      When I bought my house 11 years ago, I could get an older small house or a 21st century house that was too big. I wanted a detached house but I don't need surplus space and I certainly don't want to deal with extra heating/cooling/cleaning/maintenance on that unneeded space. This was in an affordable mid-size town away from the coasts. I ended up buying a small house that was built in the 1940s. I still wish I could have got something with modern wiring and no lead paint, but the same compact size. I can't tell if people are really demanding larger homes over time (per cheald above) or if people who aren't custom-building are forced to pick from a size range that has offered fewer small houses over time.

gascan 8y ago

There still are places you could. Skimming Zillow, you can get a 2br in Ohio for ~$450/mo.