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>We had 90% tax rates in the 50s. A man makes $10 (granted it may be his millionth $10 for the year) and we take away $9 from him. Do you honestly think this

• vaksel 18y ago
  you do remember we fought this tiny war in the 40s that needed to be repaid? Seems to me that a lot of people have no problem being patriotic, until it hits their wallet. Is 90% tax rate optimal? Maybe not, but it just goes to show you that even with a 90% tax rate, it wasn't the end of the world. Funny, during the red scare, 90% tax rate was still considered capitalism, and now a 39% instead of 35% is considered communism.
• AlisdairO 18y ago
  The first point to note is that the 90% rate kicked in at an earning rate of several million in today's money. The second (more debateable) point is that the rich, in the end, receive greater benefit from society than the poor. The poor man receives (say) an education, income support, roads, etc. The rich entrepreneur benefits from the fact that each of his employees received an education thanks to society. The rich man benefits to the tune of many millions because society protects his property (both intellectual and physical), and provides him with a stable environment to do business in. The benefits the rich receive are not just personal, but also present in terms of the affiliations that help make them rich. Sure, there's the question of whether this tax rate is too high, but it's also hard to argue that when someone is earning many millions per year that it's just for them to have all that money, rather than it being distributed a bit more evenly to their workers. Capitalist society does seem to favour income concentrating ever more tightly at the top, and mechanisms need to be in place to address that.
  • Femur 18y ago
    >The first point to note is that the 90% rate kicked in at an earning rate of several million in today's money I did note that by saying "granted it may be his millionth $10 for the year" >Sure, there's the question of whether this tax rate is too high That was my question. Do you feel it is just to take away 90% of a person's marginal income?
    • AlisdairO 18y ago
      Hm. You're right, I didn't adequately address your post. My apologies. When it's over that many millions, then yes, I think it's reasonable. It's highly questionable whether any individual is actually worth, say, 100 million a year. There's virtually always someone who could take their place - if Bill Gates hadn't made his fortune on MS, a different, perfectly adequate OS vendor would have succeeded, and the PC landscape probably wouldn't be so vastly different from what it is today. Ditto Ellison, etc. If the individual isn't totally irreplaceable, it's a bit hard to justify their having the income of 2000 average households - so it's fair to tax that income as a correction of the unfair inequalities that a capitalist system naturally leads to. The truly irreplaceable people - the once in a generation brilliant minds - tend not to be vastly wealthy anyway. A further point is that few people become entrepreneurs in order to become stellar-level rich. Sure, they want to be wealthy, and I think we all know that a tax system that discourages people from wanting to become millionaires is a mistake, but it's unlikely that massive taxes on people earning more than 50 million a year is going to discourage entrepreneurship. I'm not, however, arguing that a 90% tax rate is necessarily sensible. In the modern world, people will likely just move out of the country to avoid the taxation.