Hewlett Packard 1939 - Top Income Tax Rate 79%
Intel 1968 - 75%
Microsoft 1975 - 50%
Adobe 1982 - 50%
Google 1998 - 40%
Hewlett Packard 1939 - 63% (1 year holding) to 23% (10 year holding)
Intel 1968 - 25%
Microsoft 1975 - 20%
Adobe 1982 - 20%
Google 1998 - 20%
If at any point I experienced a tax rate of 98%, I imagine I would not be highly motivated to earn more money.
I'm sure being tax exiles helped keep their motivation up.
Is the latest economic downturn a sign that there's too much FU money out there? Is everyone with a 7 figure bank account like the hordes of minor nobles? Is our form of meritocracy real and valid? Do we still have civic values that go beyond everyone being in the game so they can quit playing? (Are religious values filling the void in the US in a subtle theocratic takeover?)
While there are other incentives, it's somewhat silly to think that the Beatles were paying the top marginal rate in the US.
Didn't we just find out that U2 has done what the Rolling Stones and others did before them to almost completely avoid tax revenue by carefully picking where their royalties were taxed?
Marginal tax rates rarely affect the super rich. Instead, they hit the merely well off.
That's by design - the "merely well off" collectively have far more money and much less political clout. In fact, you can hit them while claiming to be going after the rich.
(The accompanying article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html )
For more on how the system works, you can find a readable overview from sources ranging from Bill Gates Sr. to Noam Chomsky: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=90058... http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticlePrint/8114
I'm not sure what pg means with "socialism." (Does this word mean that workplaces are run by the workers, an important concept within socialism? Or is it just something about higher taxes?) In any case, I probably don't agree with his argument that the profit motive is necessary for hard work, though I do believe that people who are their own bosses (self-managing workers) are likely much better for innovation than the alternative.