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> If people were able to budget for it then, why not now? A failing public education system and increasingly consumerist culture that encourages bad spending h

> If people were able to budget for it then, why not now? A failing public education system and increasingly consumerist culture that encourages bad spending habits using psychological advertising tricks, to start. Go look at how little savings Americans have currently as well, which has been covered ad nauseam by most news outlets in the past few years. > Without the painful transparency, it becomes too easy for the government to nearly invisibly turn up the tax rate on individuals to pay for whatever boondoggle or foreign war they see fit. Given that it directly affects take-home pay, any significant change is pretty noticeable. Heck, even Trump's very small changes for the middle class were noticed on paychecks slightly, though there was also an unequal decrease in witholding that made people's refunds smaller.

rplst8 8y ago
> A failing public education system and increasingly consumerist culture that encourages bad spending habits using psychological advertising tricks, to start. Go look at how little savings Americans have currently as well, which has been covered ad nauseam by most news outlets in the past few years. While these may play a small part in why people couldn't budget for it now, I think a bigger part of it is that income tax just did not apply to most people in as large of sums that it does today. For example. The lowest tax bracket in 1940 was 4% and went from $0-4000. Median income at that time in the US was about $950.
- mauricio 8y ago
  Using the tax brackets to measure how much we pay in taxes is incorrect. There are things like Earned Income Credit and other credits that generally relieve the tax burden completely from lower income earners. Check out https://taxfoundation.org/summary-federal-income-tax-data-2017/ https://taxfoundation.org/summary-federal-income-tax-data-20... for an analysis on 2015 US taxes. The bottom 50% of the US paid an average of 3.59% of their income. MarketWatch claims that 44.4% of Americans pay no federal income tax at all: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/81-million-americans-wont-pay-any-federal-income-taxes-this-year-heres-why-2018-04-16 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/81-million-americans-wont-...
projektfu 8y ago
Far fewer people were subject to the income tax at the time. The average Joe who couldn't read well or do much arithmetic didn't have to worry about it. For this reason the Social Security tax was implemented as a payroll tax. The tax was intended primarily as a tax on the wealthy or middle class, but over time by not adjusting the standard deduction/exemptions, more and more people ended up paying the tax. You could also make the argument that more and more people became middle class.

rplst8 8y ago

> A failing public education system and increasingly consumerist culture that encourages bad spending habits using psychological advertising tricks, to start. Go look at how little savings Americans have currently as well, which has been covered ad nauseam by most news outlets in the past few years. While these may play a small part in why people couldn't budget for it now, I think a bigger part of it is that income tax just did not apply to most people in as large of sums that it does today. For example. The lowest tax bracket in 1940 was 4% and went from $0-4000. Median income at that time in the US was about $950.

mauricio 8y ago
Using the tax brackets to measure how much we pay in taxes is incorrect. There are things like Earned Income Credit and other credits that generally relieve the tax burden completely from lower income earners. Check out https://taxfoundation.org/summary-federal-income-tax-data-2017/ https://taxfoundation.org/summary-federal-income-tax-data-20... for an analysis on 2015 US taxes. The bottom 50% of the US paid an average of 3.59% of their income. MarketWatch claims that 44.4% of Americans pay no federal income tax at all: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/81-million-americans-wont-pay-any-federal-income-taxes-this-year-heres-why-2018-04-16 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/81-million-americans-wont-...

projektfu 8y ago

Far fewer people were subject to the income tax at the time. The average Joe who couldn't read well or do much arithmetic didn't have to worry about it. For this reason the Social Security tax was implemented as a payroll tax. The tax was intended primarily as a tax on the wealthy or middle class, but over time by not adjusting the standard deduction/exemptions, more and more people ended up paying the tax. You could also make the argument that more and more people became middle class.