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Comment by jakelazaroff | Hacker News Reader

To put this in context, a 70% rate on the top marginal income tax bracket is not unprecedented, or even high by historical standards [1]:

> Sanders said income tax rates under Eisenhower were as high as 90 percent.

> A look through the records shows that top earners in the eight years of Eisenhower’s presidency paid a top income tax rate of 91 percent. It was even a bit higher before he took office.

> We rate Sanders’ statement True.

[1] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov...

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Technically correct, although dividends were excluded from the high income rate, so most ultra-wealthy just took much of their income in dividends instead. (Or pursued other means of tax avoidance[0], or tax evasion[1].)

[0]: i.e., legal

[1]: i.e., illegal

> income tax rates under Eisenhower were as high as 90 percent.

Climate change is not WWII.

No, it is actually much, much worse.

You're right - the stakes are much higher with climate change.

Sure, but they are not imminent (what is the pearl harbor of climate change?). Further, climate change is highly politicized whereas WWII mobilized the entire country in purpose.

> what is the pearl harbor of climate change?

I'd say Katrina, Sandy, Irene, Maria, Camp, Woolsey, and Mendocino, but if you're not convinced already you'll never be.

Disclaimer: I'm apolitical because right/left is divide-and-conquer, divided-we-fall noise.

Climate change shouldn't be political or some far-off hypothetical.. no propaganda, rationalization or BS can deny the mountain of evidence that it's an immediate, existential threat that demands immediate, decisive action on the decatrillion-dollar moonshot scale (roughly the total, multi-decade cost of Iraq & Afghanistan).

> income tax rates under Eisenhower were as high as 90 percent. > Climate change is not WWII.

The sentence you highlighted has nothing to do with WWII.

Eisenhower was president from 1953 to 1961.

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