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Which is why the economy collapsed in the 1950s when the top marginal tax rate was 91%, and we’ve been living in a Mad Max wasteland ever since.
by ncallaway 4y ago
Which is why the economy collapsed in the 1950s when the top marginal tax rate was 91%, and we’ve been living in a Mad Max wasteland ever since.
- WalterBright 4y agoVery few people ever paid 91%. The reason was there were all sorts of tax shelters available at the time. This resulted in a lot of misallocation of resources. A lot of personal expenses could also be written off as a business expense, the most infamous of those was the "three martini lunch". Reagan, in his deal to reduce the top marginal tax rates, also eliminated a vast swath of tax shelters and tax deductions. More generally, the government consumed much less of the GDP in the 50s than it does today.