3 ms·

Pretending that rates like these are unheard-of madness is either ignorance or an attempt to deceive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_St

• mc32 8y ago
  The real question is what was the effective rate? Did any significant portion of those who were in those brackets actually pay those rates, or was it mostly theoretical on paper rates?
• DannyBee 8y ago
  They appear to have existed explicitly to finance wars? They are in fact unheard of outside of that? What am i missing?
  • awinder 8y ago
    how do you then explain the period from 1925 (post war reductions) to 1940 where the top tax rate was increased to finance government during the great depression?
    • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      The great depression was a de-facto national emergency and the responses at the federal level reflect that.
      • awinder 8y ago
        yeah that's still a 100% increase in the number of cases where federal funding is necessary given what the parent poster claimed. also now that we've expanded the pool to include emergencies, all we need to do is coach any argument into emergency classification (national debt, global warming, economic imbalances) for it to justify increased taxation.
• ryanworl 8y ago
  This is a distortion of history. No one paid these rates. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 eliminated, reduced, or modified the deductions the people that would've paid these rates were previously allowed. Additionally, the wealthiest individuals typically do not receive much wage income relative to their capital gains. There are reasonable arguments to be made about increasing or decreasing taxes, or adding new types taxes or removing other ones, but this meme of "our posted tax brackets used to be higher, and everything was fine, therefore we need that again" is simply untrue.
  • _jal 8y ago
    > and everything was fine, therefore we need that again" is simply untrue. I said nothing of the sort. If you have an argument with someone else, go have the argument with them; don't put words in my mouth.
    • kolbe 8y ago
      Your original statement was a response to no one, too. Not sure why you're upset when he did the same. I think it's arguably even fairer of him, because due to your lack of explanation for why you made your comment, he was left to surmise what the purpose could have been.
      • _jal 8y ago
        Uh, what? That person responded to me. And since it is apparently OK with you to make up stuff that other people never said, I take serious issue with your immoral pro-puppy-murder stance.