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>"The American Dream" was made possible by government spending to subsidize home purchases. The 1950s housing act. No, it wasn't. The american dream was the r
by potato3732842 1y ago
>"The American Dream" was made possible by government spending to subsidize home purchases. The 1950s housing act.
No, it wasn't. The american dream was the reality of huge swaths of the middle class. Who do you think all those pre-1950 single family homes were built for? And of those that didn't live in a single family dwelling, the other inhabitants of a multi-family was often related to them.
The subsidy just made it a little more accessible down-market.
>What made america great was taxing the hell out of the rich
Um, what? Look at tax receipts relative to GDP. We've never taxed harder than we do now. Even if you assume we took it all from the rich back then it was still less.
The only way this comment only holds if you look at fed income tax only and you look at the nominal rate, which is farcical.
- tern 1y agoI see arguments like this all the time these days, and it feels important to me to have the story straightened out. Can anyone recommend a resource that comes to a definitive, non-partisan conclusion (even if the answer is: "it's complicated," or "neither")? (Separately, it's interesting to ask LLMs questions like this: https://chatgpt.com/share/68cc9e37-8a2c-800e-aeef-dc88977f56fe https://chatgpt.com/share/68cc9e37-8a2c-800e-aeef-dc88977f56...)
- ckemere 1y agohttps://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/80552/total-tax-burden-on-the-average-american-and-how-has-it-changed-over-the-years https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/80552/total-tax... (Though this doesn’t capture top end federal income tax rate.)
- dh2022 1y agoRe: "Look at tax receipts relative to GDP. We've never taxed harder than we do now. " - would you mind sharing some data sources for this. Thanks a lot!
- chessgecko 1y agoWouldn’t say never harder, but it’s been pretty flat. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
- theteapot 1y agoCrude starting point from ChatGPT: U.S. Corporate Tax Revenue as a Percentage of GDP (1900–2020s) Decade Corporate Tax Revenue as % of GDP 1900s ~0.1% 1910s ~0.5% 1920s ~0.8% 1930s ~1.0% 1940s ~4.0% 1950s ~4.3% 1960s ~3.5% 1970s ~3.0% 1980s ~2.5% 1990s ~2.5% 2000s ~1.3% 2010s ~1.0% 2020s (est.) ~1.0% (varies slightly) U.S. Individual Income Tax Revenue as a Percentage of GDP (1900-2020s) Decade Income Tax Revenue as % of GDP 1900s ~0.0% 1910s ~0.5% 1920s ~1.5% 1930s ~3.5% 1940s ~7.5% 1950s ~8.0% 1960s ~8.0% 1970s ~8.5% 1980s ~8.0% 1990s ~8.0% 2000s ~8.5% 2010s ~8.0% 2020s (est.) ~8.0% (varies slightly)
- kingkawn 1y ago“a little more accessible” is condescension of the poor