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What's happened to taxes over the last 3 decades? What were the top-line tax rates in the 1950s, 1970s, 1990s, 2010s, and now? What did the distribution if in

What's happened to taxes over the last 3 decades? What were the top-line tax rates in the 1950s, 1970s, 1990s, 2010s, and now? What did the distribution if incomes look like between the richest and poorest in each of those decades. We've continually cut taxes on the wealthiest in society, allowing them to get ever richer. The poor have continued to get poorer, and have less and less to contribute in tax revenue. Spending is flat, revenue goes down, deficit goes up. It's pretty simple math. The state of affairs is not sustainable, but the solution is not gutting spending (there are, I'm sure, areas that could be trimmed), but rather returning to tax rates and policies that we had in the past, along with some bonus-taxes to reduce the extreme income-inequality that we currently have. So, if you want fiscal sustainability: - tax the ever-living-fuck out of the billionaire class - increase taxes significantly on the multi-millionaire class - increase taxes moderately on the millionaire-class - significantly increase estate taxes, especially on estates worth >$1B Maintain that for a couple of decades, then slowly and slightly relax the top-line tax rates. If someone is selling you fiscal sustainability without talking about making a billionaire's eyes water, they are just lying to you.

sumeno 2y ago
It's embarrassing that the most well thought out and detailed response is being downvoted
floren 2y ago
They'll lie to you by saying that back in the 50s when the top tax rates were so high, the rich just "didn't pay". Well, if you look at the revenue vs spending lines, SOMEBODY was paying!
lurk2 2y ago
> Spending is flat, revenue goes down, deficit goes up. It's pretty simple math. Can you demonstrate that this is what actually occurred? This data from the IRS shows inflation-adjusted revenues increasing in the last two decades. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/22intaba.xls https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/22intaba.xls
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Now do population adjusted.
  - ncallaway 2y ago
    Man, your answer was so much more concise than mine :)
  - lurk2 2y ago
    See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227146
- ncallaway 2y ago
  Well, inflation adjusted isn't really a great measurement for whether federal spending was stable over decades. Think of it this way, let's come up with a pretend nation called Breadland. This nation has a government which issues a currency that we'll call the Dollar. We'll say in 1920, Breadland had 1,000 citizens, who were each taxed at $1/year. Breadland citizens could buy a loaf of bread on the market for $.25/loaf. The government provided citizens 4 loaves of bread each year. So, the Breadland government brought in $1,000 in revenue in 1920, and it provided each citizens 5 loaves of bread at market cost, so it spent $1,250. Now, let's jump ahead to 2020. Over 100 years things have changed a bit. It now costs $1 to buy a loaf of bread, and there are 100,000 citizens. If the Breadland government simply keep its revenues up with inflation, then it would now bring in $4,000 of revenue in 2020. But it has 100 times as many citizens now. So, maybe it would make more sense to see if the tax an individual pays has kept up with inflation. Now each citizen is only paying $0.04 in taxes! Where if the individual payment amount had kept up with inflation, they would be paying $4. And similarly, if the spending only keeps up with inflation, you can see that the amount of government services will have cratered. Where before the government bought 5 loaves of bread per citizen, now it buys just 1/20th of a loaf of bread per citizen. Obviously, this is an extreme example to demonstrate the point, but for a nation's gross revenue and spending "inflation-adjusted" is simply the wrong baseline. You should be comparing to something like "inflation-adjusted per capita" spending and revenue, or something that will wash out similar like comparing the spending/revenue as a percentage of GDP. An easy place to view spending/revenue as a % of GDP is...the article that this discussion is taking place in the context of: https://lbo-news.com/2025/02/16/no-federal-spending-and-employment-are-not-out-of-control https://lbo-news.com/2025/02/16/no-federal-spending-and-empl.... But, let's take a really simple look at spending in 2010, 2000, and 1990. I'm going to use taxfoundation.org as a source, since they're generally opposed to my viewpoints, hopefully you can trust them as a source. Data is here: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/federal-tax-revenue-source-1934-2018/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/federal-tax-reven... - 2010 Gross Revenue (Millions of dollars): $2,162,706 - 2000 Gross Revenue (Millions of dollars): $2,025,191 - 1990 Gross Revenue (Millions of dollars): $1,031,958 - 1980 Gross Revenue (Millions of dollars): $517,112 Let's first adjust for inflation. I'm going to adjust everything to 2010 dollars, using the BLS calculator here: https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm# https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm# - 2010 Gross Revenue (Millions of 2010 dollars): $2,162,706 - 2000 Gross Revenue (Millions of 2010 dollars): $2,599,719 - 1990 Gross Revenue (Millions of 2010 dollars): $1,755,195 - 1980 Gross Revenue (Millions of 2010 dollars): $1,440,250 So, we can see the same increase in inflation adjusted dollars. Let's now make it inflation-adjusted per-capita. I'm going to use US census data from here: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange-data-text.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange..., and we'll take the top-line "United States Resident" population. - 2010 Population 308,745,538 - 2000 Population 281,421,906 - 1990 Population 248,709,873 - 1980 Population 226,545,805 Now we'll simply take the gross revenue, as millions of 2010 dollars, and divide by the population (let's do per-100k instead of literally per-capita, since our revenue figures are in millions of dollars: - 2010 Gross Revenue Per Capita (Millions of 2010 dollars per 100k people): $700.48 - 2000 Gross Revenue Per Capita (Millions of 2010 dollars per 100k people): $923.78 - 1990 Gross Revenue Per Capita (Millions of 2010 dollars per 100k people): $705.72 - 1980 Gross Revenue Per Capita (Millions of 2010 dollars per 100k people): $635.74 Does that address your question?
khaki54 2y ago
If you seized the entirety of assets of US billionaires, you could only run the country for 6 months max. So it proves immediately that simply taxing them more isn't the correct answer and won't have any meaningful effect whatsoever. Anyway, Federal taxes are income based at this time and most billionaires do not have income except when they sell an asset for a profit. Billionaires do tend to pay huge amounts in state and local taxes which are used more efficiently anyway. One billionaire leaving a town during covid due to increased tax burden and SALT exemption reduction effectively bankrupted them and the school district. A baby born 5 seconds ago already inherits 100k in debt which is nothing other than a delayed exponential tax on top of all the other ones he or she will pay in their life. We have to reduce spending by a massive amount to get to fiscal sustainability.
- ncallaway 2y ago
  > If you seized the entirety of assets of US billionaires, you could only run the country for 6 months max. That seems unlikely, given that we can run the country for 6 more months without doing that, which makes me suspect the rest of your revenue and spending analysis.
  - khaki54 2y ago
    Come on friend. I'll rephrase it slightly. All that money would only fund the US gov 6 months. The reality though it that it would destroy the country at a minimum. What I will say is that during covid billionaires expanded greatly. So, the $6.1T that billionaires are worth, would fund 11 months of US spending ($6.9T)
    - ncallaway 2y ago
      Sure, and I'm not a "billionaires shouldn't exist at all" person, so I'm not saying we should have a 95% wealth tax on billionaires. I'm also not proposing that we fund the government solely by taxing billionaires. I'm saying we should tax them significantly more than we do now, and we should also tax multi-millionaires a lot more than we do now, and we should focus on reducing the deficit by raising revenues. We don't need to close the gap with all 6.9T in spending, we need to reduce the deficit of $800B. We should look at raising an addition 200-600B in revenue, putting the burden largely on the backs of the extremely wealthy (and not just billionaires, but if you're in a household making more than half a million dollars a year), by heavily taxing their income, capital gains, and estates. We should look at moderate reductions in our defense spending. With approaches like that we could bring our deficit down into the $100-$200B range, which would be a more reasonable steady state for us.

sumeno 2y ago

It's embarrassing that the most well thought out and detailed response is being downvoted

floren 2y ago

They'll lie to you by saying that back in the 50s when the top tax rates were so high, the rich just "didn't pay". Well, if you look at the revenue vs spending lines, SOMEBODY was paying!

lurk2 2y ago

> Spending is flat, revenue goes down, deficit goes up. It's pretty simple math. Can you demonstrate that this is what actually occurred? This data from the IRS shows inflation-adjusted revenues increasing in the last two decades. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/22intaba.xls https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/22intaba.xls

ceejayoz 2y ago
Now do population adjusted.
- ncallaway 2y ago
  Man, your answer was so much more concise than mine :)
- lurk2 2y ago
  See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227146
ncallaway 2y ago
Well, inflation adjusted isn't really a great measurement for whether federal spending was stable over decades. Think of it this way, let's come up with a pretend nation called Breadland. This nation has a government which issues a currency that we'll call the Dollar. We'll say in 1920, Breadland had 1,000 citizens, who were each taxed at $1/year. Breadland citizens could buy a loaf of bread on the market for $.25/loaf. The government provided citizens 4 loaves of bread each year. So, the Breadland government brought in $1,000 in revenue in 1920, and it provided each citizens 5 loaves of bread at market cost, so it spent $1,250. Now, let's jump ahead to 2020. Over 100 years things have changed a bit. It now costs $1 to buy a loaf of bread, and there are 100,000 citizens. If the Breadland government simply keep its revenues up with inflation, then it would now bring in $4,000 of revenue in 2020. But it has 100 times as many citizens now. So, maybe it would make more sense to see if the tax an individual pays has kept up with inflation. Now each citizen is only paying $0.04 in taxes! Where if the individual payment amount had kept up with inflation, they would be paying $4. And similarly, if the spending only keeps up with inflation, you can see that the amount of government services will have cratered. Where before the government bought 5 loaves of bread per citizen, now it buys just 1/20th of a loaf of bread per citizen. Obviously, this is an extreme example to demonstrate the point, but for a nation's gross revenue and spending "inflation-adjusted" is simply the wrong baseline. You should be comparing to something like "inflation-adjusted per capita" spending and revenue, or something that will wash out similar like comparing the spending/revenue as a percentage of GDP. An easy place to view spending/revenue as a % of GDP is...the article that this discussion is taking place in the context of: https://lbo-news.com/2025/02/16/no-federal-spending-and-employment-are-not-out-of-control https://lbo-news.com/2025/02/16/no-federal-spending-and-empl.... But, let's take a really simple look at spending in 2010, 2000, and 1990. I'm going to use taxfoundation.org as a source, since they're generally opposed to my viewpoints, hopefully you can trust them as a source. Data is here: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/federal-tax-revenue-source-1934-2018/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/federal-tax-reven... - 2010 Gross Revenue (Millions of dollars): $2,162,706 - 2000 Gross Revenue (Millions of dollars): $2,025,191 - 1990 Gross Revenue (Millions of dollars): $1,031,958 - 1980 Gross Revenue (Millions of dollars): $517,112 Let's first adjust for inflation. I'm going to adjust everything to 2010 dollars, using the BLS calculator here: https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm# https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm# - 2010 Gross Revenue (Millions of 2010 dollars): $2,162,706 - 2000 Gross Revenue (Millions of 2010 dollars): $2,599,719 - 1990 Gross Revenue (Millions of 2010 dollars): $1,755,195 - 1980 Gross Revenue (Millions of 2010 dollars): $1,440,250 So, we can see the same increase in inflation adjusted dollars. Let's now make it inflation-adjusted per-capita. I'm going to use US census data from here: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange-data-text.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange..., and we'll take the top-line "United States Resident" population. - 2010 Population 308,745,538 - 2000 Population 281,421,906 - 1990 Population 248,709,873 - 1980 Population 226,545,805 Now we'll simply take the gross revenue, as millions of 2010 dollars, and divide by the population (let's do per-100k instead of literally per-capita, since our revenue figures are in millions of dollars: - 2010 Gross Revenue Per Capita (Millions of 2010 dollars per 100k people): $700.48 - 2000 Gross Revenue Per Capita (Millions of 2010 dollars per 100k people): $923.78 - 1990 Gross Revenue Per Capita (Millions of 2010 dollars per 100k people): $705.72 - 1980 Gross Revenue Per Capita (Millions of 2010 dollars per 100k people): $635.74 Does that address your question?

khaki54 2y ago

If you seized the entirety of assets of US billionaires, you could only run the country for 6 months max. So it proves immediately that simply taxing them more isn't the correct answer and won't have any meaningful effect whatsoever. Anyway, Federal taxes are income based at this time and most billionaires do not have income except when they sell an asset for a profit. Billionaires do tend to pay huge amounts in state and local taxes which are used more efficiently anyway. One billionaire leaving a town during covid due to increased tax burden and SALT exemption reduction effectively bankrupted them and the school district. A baby born 5 seconds ago already inherits 100k in debt which is nothing other than a delayed exponential tax on top of all the other ones he or she will pay in their life. We have to reduce spending by a massive amount to get to fiscal sustainability.

ncallaway 2y ago
> If you seized the entirety of assets of US billionaires, you could only run the country for 6 months max. That seems unlikely, given that we can run the country for 6 more months without doing that, which makes me suspect the rest of your revenue and spending analysis.
- khaki54 2y ago
  Come on friend. I'll rephrase it slightly. All that money would only fund the US gov 6 months. The reality though it that it would destroy the country at a minimum. What I will say is that during covid billionaires expanded greatly. So, the $6.1T that billionaires are worth, would fund 11 months of US spending ($6.9T)
  - ncallaway 2y ago
    Sure, and I'm not a "billionaires shouldn't exist at all" person, so I'm not saying we should have a 95% wealth tax on billionaires. I'm also not proposing that we fund the government solely by taxing billionaires. I'm saying we should tax them significantly more than we do now, and we should also tax multi-millionaires a lot more than we do now, and we should focus on reducing the deficit by raising revenues. We don't need to close the gap with all 6.9T in spending, we need to reduce the deficit of $800B. We should look at raising an addition 200-600B in revenue, putting the burden largely on the backs of the extremely wealthy (and not just billionaires, but if you're in a household making more than half a million dollars a year), by heavily taxing their income, capital gains, and estates. We should look at moderate reductions in our defense spending. With approaches like that we could bring our deficit down into the $100-$200B range, which would be a more reasonable steady state for us.