2 ms·
After WWII the top tax rates were almost 3x higher, reaching above 90%. That'll help level your wealth distribution for you.
by spywaregorilla 5y ago
After WWII the top tax rates were almost 3x higher, reaching above 90%. That'll help level your wealth distribution for you.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoI hate this trope. What were the effective tax rates paid? The high nominal rates were trivially easy to circumvent so the rates people actually paid weren't all that historically anomalous. When you start talking about overall tax burden (sales taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, etc) the 1950s look like a libertarian's wet dream.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoEffective tax rates on the top 1% were around 43%, falling around 32% in the mid 2000's. Last data point on this source was about 37%. Meanwhile the growth of real income held by the top earners has dramatically risen since the 1980s vs. the other classes. With these two facts in mind, one would assume that a modern day spectrum of income inequality on 1950s taxation policy would see an effective rate MUCH higher than what they experienced, which was still generally noticeably higher than what is experienced today. A couple percentage points makes a big difference. https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/ https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/ https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide...
- closeparen 5y agoWealth isn't (just) stored-up income. At least, if you're going to make this equivalence, also limit your picture of wealth inequality to the subset of wealth which is stored-up income. My sense is that the vast majority of the wealth inequality picture is driven by returns.