I stopped reading here. Try again. Current top income tax rates are insanely slow by historical standards. They were 90% in the 40s and 50s and 70% in the 70s [0]
[0] http://taxfoundation.org/sites/default/files/docs/fed_indivi...
Also, America was the only game in town during those years. All of the competition was still recovering from WW2 and/or being suffocated by communist rule. And it was a single market the size of the rest of the Western world combined. If you had money, America was the place to invest it. Major technological breakthroughs, even when originating overseas, generally took off in the US.
On a moral note, I think that an 80% tax rate is oppressive. That money would otherwise be flowing into business investments & consumption, charity, and civil society, the natural institutions of free people.
What do you think the gov't does with it, burn it? 5 of the 6 startups I worked for wouldn't have happened without government assistance (DARPA-funded university project spinouts, SBA, government contracting.) Consumption is spending money. They government spends it, or give it to people who do (that seems to cover consumption and charity.) What is more civil than banding together to take some of the variance out of life?
Letting people decide how to spend their own money. Private charity is "banding together to take some of the variance out of life". Like all of the government's authority, taxation flows from the end of a gun. You can be imprisoned and fined if you don't pay what you owe.
> What do you think the gov't does with it, burn it? 5 of the 6 startups I worked for wouldn't have happened without government assistance
Government investment in certain sectors can be good, such as for fundamental sciences. But in general, private investment does better with the same amount of money. Even when government programs are well designed at their birth, the world around them changes faster than politics and bureaucracy can keep up with.
[1]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US%24200000+%281945+US...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States...
The idea that the government is entitled to more of someone's earnings than they are is shocking. To then suggest the government is entitled to 4 out of every 5 dollars a person earns is, quite frankly, beneath consideration in my eyes.
What right do you, i or anyone else have to call this anything but theft?
Looking at GP's PDF for 1945:
Income Take home
$10,000 $7,060
$20,000 $12,140
$50,000 $21,680
$100,000 $29,680
$200,000 $37,180
$500,000 $55,180
Inspired by michaelchisari below, here's the same table in 2015 $$
Income Take home
$132,576.67 $93,599.13
$265,153.33 $160,948.07
$662,883.33 $287,426.21
$1,325,766.67 $393,487.55
$2,651,533.33 $492,920.05
$6,628,833.33 $731,558.05
Astounding double standards. Some numbers: if Ted makes $100,000/yr and Jim earns $1,000,000/yr and both are taxed at 30%, Jim is already paying $270,000 _more_ in taxes every year. Even at the same tax rate. Crank Jim's rate to 90% and we are looking at an $870,000/yr difference! Through what greed can we morally justify such insatiable lust for the money other's have earned?
Furthermore, the capital gains argument is rife with unintended consequences. It, quite literally, disincentives the wealthiest folks from innovating and earning money through economically productive means. Instead, we send the message "if you insist on earning money by working like the rest of us, we are going to take 80% of it. But, if you want to rest on the laurels of your investments and be otherwise unproductive, by all means. The choice is yours."
It terrifies me that this mindset is the majority opinion these days.
If that is in fact what you mean, it still changing absolutely nothing. The effective tax rate on folks in these upper brackets would still be enormous.
But i guess piggybacking baseless comments is an easy way to avoid justifying these stances. I still have not seen someone say how they are justified in taking that much money from people while feeling ethical.
When kids born today are unable to afford to go to college, while the same people who are against +80% tax were born in an era when tax was way higher at +90% that helped pay for their education and create the infrastructure that allowed them to earn their wealth.
"Surplus Wealth is a scared trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community " - Andrew Caregie.
Guess what if you think the government is treating you unfairly then be prepared when society bifurcates and returns a stack error in the form of "bolsheviks".
A quick google search yields an average cost of $9k for a state school, $22k for out of state, and $31k for private. Maybe the expensive side of college is "mortgage-sized" debt, provided you are comparing to the cheapest mortgages.
While I think the idea that everybody should go to college is fundamentally harmful, I do think that everybody who wants to should be able to go to college. On the other hand, taking out $200,000 in loans to study comparative literature at an ivy league school, and then demanding that the universe provides means to pay it all back is ridiculous. People should buy into their education with a long-term plan. Most people cannot afford the luxury of majoring in an unprofitable subject while incurring enormous debt.
It's a trend to try and take from the rich and give to the poor. If you truly want more distributed income across the people (I wouldn't call it income equality because that's impossible.) then you'll find instituting more taxation does little to fix that. Most of the 1%'s wealth doesn't come from their income. There's a reason many CEOs take $1/year as salary.
The entitlement system is absolutely broken. I'm all for a smaller government, but if we could replace the broken system with some sort of basic income (and that idea seems quite contrary with my political beliefs), I doubt it'd cost more than what's currently being paid out -- and it might actually be better.
Your inclusion of Mr. Carnegie's quote is quaint. He was freely entitled to his own ideas. The beauty of freedom is that those who disagree are empowered to amass and donate their money as they personally see fit. It is neither the job, nor the right, of the populace to spend the money earned by any individual, regardless of their level of success.
When an individual who grows up without ever taking advantage of a single piece of society, they will have an argument for taxes being unfair.
Lets not forget the debts that all citizens owe to the country:
Roads
Internet
Telephones
Water
Food regulation
Environmental regulation
Scientific advancements
Protection from outside forces (military)
Flight regulations
etc.
Once youve paid for all of those you can begin to complain about how taxes are unfair.
If your argument is that more successful people consume more resources and thus owe the government a greater debt, then i would argue we should be taxing consumption more. Not income.
Consumption tax disproportionately affects the poorest citizens. It is a non-workable solution.
Consumption is what drives the economy, disincentives to consumption would hurt the economy as a whole (causing the wealthy to lose money via investments).
Further, a citizen has no hope to pay off the debt that it owes the government for the things i listed previously. There is no tax rate at which you would effectively pay back the government for its investments in society. The yearly budget of the US Department of Transportation alone, is 77 billion - that's just to keep federal roads drivable.
If you think theres some tax level at which you have paid for the initial investment and upkeep of the federal highway system, by all means share it here, i would love to know what number you think is 'fair' since its 'your money' even though they aren't 'your roads'
You have an extremely entitled view of what "fair" is.
In other words if you don't steal so much from others, go meet won't steal it back.
Potentially, one could end up collecting fewer tax dollars because they are "living" in the Bahamas or Cayman Is.
Also the top rate would apply to income over $5M in today's dollars (can't remember the exact number, but it was high). How much money do you think you can raise from folks making over $5M per year? The answer is not much, there aren't that many of them relatively speaking.
Also, if you include the earned income tax credit, low income folks are paying way less in taxes than they were back then.
FTFY. They wouldn't today, either.
Hell, the reason the US has employer sponsored healthcare is because there were wage caps during WW2. So what did companies do? Compensate with something other than wages.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State...