Comment by lumost | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lumost | Hacker News Reader

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A generation ago, progressive cycles of deficit spending and taxation had put the top tax bracket in the US at 90%. Still, there was persistent inflation - and worse high unemployment.

The belief was that the Federal Government had grown too large in the economy and needed to be "starved". To what extent government austerity vs. new monetary policy moved the needle for the US economy is unknowable. However many Americans of that generation feel that the starve the beast approach was correct.

If you talk to Americans opposed to new taxes, their opposition is usually based on the idea that the government will waste the money in one way or another. Even those on the left in favor of taxes are often in favor of taxes for redistribution purposes. It's rare that anyone pitches the government as competent outside of military spending, and even then there are many asterisks on 10k light bulbs in submarines.

If you want Americans to agree to taxes you'll need to change the perception of government competence.

> A generation ago, progressive cycles of deficit spending and taxation had put the top tax bracket in the US at 90%. Still, there was persistent inflation - and worse high unemployment.

AFAIK the "90%" rate is highly misleading because at the time there were a lot of deductions that bring the effective rate much closer to today's levels. We can see this in the federal tax receipts as % of GDP, which remained mostly flat despite the top bracket dropping from "90%" to 37%

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

"A generation ago, progressive cycles of deficit spending and taxation had put the top tax bracket in the US at 90%."

This is incorrect.

The 90% tax rate (and other notably high tax rates from that period) were temporary measures explicitly enacted to discourage war profiteering:

"The crisis of World War II led Congress to pass four excess profits statutes between 1940 and 1943. The 1940 rates ranged from 25 to 50 percent and the 1941 ones from 35 to 60 percent. In 1942, a flat rate of 90 percent was adopted, with a postwar refund of 10 percent; in 1943 the rate was increased to 95 percent, with a 10 percent refund." [1]

These were not tax rates analogous to any of our normal, peacetime rates and they were not enacted as progressive policy measures.

It is misleading and disingenuous to make any comparison between the tax rates we choose in modern peacetime which arise from political decisions about relatively progressive vs. regressive rates, etc., and these administrative rates designed to combat war profiteering and other behaviors related to a wartime economy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_profits_tax

> It's rare that anyone pitches the government as competent outside of military spending

Genuine question - do people see military as competent when it comes to spending?

The $2000 leather chair and multiple $3000 tvs my commander ordered for his office to be delivered to Kabul during a war would say no.

Nope, but the military gets a pass in most years as at least being competent. Most Americans believe that most government agencies are both incompetent and profligate.

The US military hasn't won a war in about 20 years.

That's too broad a brush. I'm against militarism, but what engagement against conventional forces has the US military lost in the last 20 years?

I can't speak to dealing with insurgencies but it's clear to me that a mix of various administrations policies was to blame more than military effectiveness.

I mean was it the military or Paul Bremmer and co who disbanded the Iraqi military and unleashed a lot of chaos?

Given that it’s the most powerful military in the world I would say it’s probably the one place where we have at least gotten our money’s worth.

I don't want to say yes but damn if we don't have a lot of military might, and as much as an American I want to say stop spending it who will fill the void? We're probably the least bad of all possibilities, and if you disagree, please teach me because I'm legitimately open minded!

Perhaps the void would be democratically elected governments who don't sell their countries to US corporations. Since WWII, USA has a poor record.

There are two straightforward answers to this.

The first is that other Western countries could pick up the slack instead of having it fall disproportionately on the US. It only got the way it is because the others were mostly bombed out after WWII and that's no longer the case.

The second is that if the US spent less and did less military interventionism, adversarial countries might not feel the need to spend as much either, and then the balance of power stays the same while everyone spends less money on bombs and warships.

The US is the only one who can initiate this because they're the only ones who can reduce military spending without being threatened even if others don't.

No, but there is a method to the madness. Military units are often given an allowance for the year. One of the responsibilities of a commissioned officer is to often manage the unit's finances. Being in the Navy, my Bosun manage my aviation fuel division's finances. The captain of the ship manages the ships finances. Or at least, they sign it all off. If units do not use their budget, their budget get slashed last year. Essentially money mismanagement comes down in many way to some rules implemented awhile back (80s I believe during the Reagan admin). If a government agency or group does not use the full amount allotted, then they are at risk of loosing some next time they are allotted money. What this has done is create a system that encourages government agencies and military units to use up the budget no matter the cost. You don't wanna be the guy who had money left over last year, so your budget got cut, not it is this year and you had 4 major equipment casualties and because your shortened budget, can't afford for the unit to buy parts. Then, this makes you looked incompetent and hurts your career.

This is why the fuels division I was in, we often bought new desk chairs every year and $500 pocket knives and parts we would never need. Literally had to throw parts away to make room for the new parts.

The perception is created by billionaires buying "news" media to spread propaganda to get people to vote against their own interests, leading to "hurts itself in its confusion" attitudes like "keep the government out of my Medicare".

The Kochs, leaders of the "small government" movement are the heirs of a billionaire whoade his fortune building oil refinery for communist USSR government. They only dislike government when it helps the people instead of the oligarchs.

Ironically the thing about the Kochs is a little bit reversed. They have their own agenda, to be sure, but the biggest players in the influence game aren't individual billionaires, they're corporations and government bureaucracies.

The media always dumps on the Kochs because, atypically, part of their agenda is anti-graft. Make the government smaller by reducing corrupt spending programs and regulatory capture. Most of the bureaucracies fight each other for resources but they're not trying to turn off the spigot. The one who does becomes a target for attack. So they're the ones you've heard of.

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