> and despite tax cuts for the wealthy wages haven't gone up.
Real median personal income went up almost 8% from the year before the tax cuts (2017) and 2019.
Real median personal income went up almost 8% from the year before the tax cuts (2017) and 2019.
That's not zero, but compared to GDP, the stock market, and other measures of overall economic health -- which have gone up by an order of magnitude or more -- the median is practically immobile.
And for much of that time, it was even more immobile. The median was $31k in 1997, and was $31k in 2014. It bottomed out at $30k in 2012; it has been rising since but that was almost two decades of complete stagnation -- while GDP rose and stock markets climbed.
Let's analyze three periods:
1953-1985: no significant trend in effective capital gains tax
1985-1996: upward trend and higher capital gains tax
1996-2020: downward trend
Now let's compare those periods to real median family income (which tracks to 1953). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA672N
Annualized growth in real median income:
1953-1985: 1.8%
1985-1996: 0.8%
1996-2020: 2.0%
Real median income growth during lower capital gains tax policy was twice that of the period of higher capital gains tax policy.
The periods aren't "cherry-picked." If you'd actually look at the plotted effective capital gains rate, you'd see a clear difference in tax policy in those three periods.
The "fuzzy subjective descriptors" are totally in line with the parent poster's: "long term tax policy."
The first period includes within it a perfectly flat period longer than shortest of the periods you chose followed by a period of equal length that is more consistently increasing than the (mostly flat) period you've held up as an increasing trend, and then a period nearly as long as your shortest that is as consistently and more sharply decreasing than the one you hold up as showing a decreasing trend.
So, no, I don't see natural breakpoints in the data.
(You've kind of muddied whether you are more concerned with the actual cap gains tax rate or the trend in changes to the rate, seeming to lean a little more heavily on the former, so I focussed on that in my criticism; but if you care about the rates instead of the deltas the periods you chose still make no sense, for similar reasons.)
It sounds like you're referring to the "maximum tax rate on long term gains." As I stated, I used the "effective capital gains tax rate," which is the average rate that is being taxed (long term cap gains tax is different than short term).