The marginal tax rate is not the average tax rate.
80% tax rate Means prosperity
- Thread starter jueco2005
- Start date
Evidently you are not, in fact, aware of the historical facts:
Federal tax receipts in 1956 were 17.5% of GDP.
Federal tax receipts fifty-two years later in 2008 were... 17.5% of GDP.
The individual income tax in 1956 constituted 43.2% of all receipts. In 2008 the figure was 45.4%. Lower marginal rates meant zilch.
The only thing that has changed tax-wise in the last fifty+ years is that corporate income taxes (what is actually paid, not the rates) have been cut by half to two thirds, while social insurance taxes (FICA) have increased by a factor of two to three. Remember that half of FICA is paid by employers. On the spending side, the problem is entirely driven by Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
I never said high tax rate on the rich were necessary for prosperity to occur.
I simply point out it is not the evil they want to make us believe. 1940 to 1980 was a prosperous time for America and the world where many things could not have been possible if the average tax rate wasn't so high. President Reagan and his republics cut the tax rate but they never cut the spending and now are have an un-payable national debt and growing by the minute.
Well it seems to be a high tax rate isnât to bad and its not communism or socialism or anything people want to call it to make it unacceptable.
As already pointed out, this is a false statement
This is of course a whole different discussion and not what you said in your first post. In order to have a meaningful discussion you need to define "TOP RICH".
Regardless of how you define it I think you will discover that the tax rates on the middle class is much more important in overall gov't tax revenue then the tax rate on the rich.
There simply aren't that many rich people....unless you are defining top rich unconventionally.
