80% tax rate Means prosperity

Quote from jueco2005:

No I am no Socialist. I already lived through that BS. However, I do believe there is a lot the US can learn from Europe and vice versa.

When the cold war was hot it was easier to reject anything social in the name of capitalism vs communism. Since 1990 there is virtually no more ideologic, economic and military wars between communism and socialism.

However, to keep the wheel going we need a new enemy. Now Europeans are “Socialists”, virtually just a step away from communism.

How then did England, France and Germany championed the fight against communism when they seem virtually the same to us???

Please follow some common sense here. We are doing many things wrong here in the US. We have too much government where we need little of it and vice versa.

Also not all Europeans are created equal. Same here.

The same difference between Houston and Detroit exists between Berlin and Athens.
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You're equivocating because you can't defend your original hypothesis that an 80% tax rate would produce prosperity. You have yet to demonstrate that a confiscatory tax rate would reap prosperity in this country.
Your statement regarding Houston and Detroit is absurd. If you can explain the relevance of this statement within the context of the discussion, please do so.

Either defend your position regarding the 80% tax rate or admit you are wrong.
 
Schiff says no one paid those 80% taxes due to too many loopholes.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UGL-Ex1CD1c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Quote from JerryAdler:

You're equivocating because you can't defend your original hypothesis that an 80% tax rate would produce prosperity. You have yet to demonstrate that a confiscatory tax rate would reap prosperity in this country.
Your statement regarding Houston and Detroit is absurd. If you can explain the relevance of this statement within the context of the discussion, please do so.

Either defend your position regarding the 80% tax rate or admit you are wrong.
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The title of the thread is just to attract you to debate here. My position is that such a rate (as it used to be from 1940 to 1980) is not an impediment to economic prosperity. Subsisting high tax rate with debt (as President Regan did and everyone else followed) is the real misery and enslavement.

Most of the industrial world has higher tax rates than the ones we have today. Provide their citizens with labor laws and social programs we are told to be communist. But bailing thieves out and maintaining a super military empire with bases and expensive undeclared wars all over the world is just very capitalistic.
 
Quote from Daxtrader:

Schiff says no one paid those 80% taxes due to too many loopholes.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UGL-Ex1CD1c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Few paid such high taxes because there were few super rich and loopholes.

Yet the marginal tax rates were more progressive the today’s. President Reagan never delimited the problem. He just postponed with debt and so did every administration after him.
 
Quote from jueco2005:

Thanks for your advice. I am aware of all these historical facts. However, this is not the point of my discussion. I believe high tax rates made a lot of things accomplishable. That is way many countries still use them today, especially successful European economies.

Thank you anyways.
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I think you need to provide some clarity on this statement as well: "... especially successful European economies." Please name those "successful" economies. The highest tax rate in Europe is in the UK where personal income is taxed at a rate of 50%. Hardly the 80% you propose. Even in Germany, which could be regarded as a reasonable success even though their national debt exceeds 83% of GDP, only taxes at the rate of 45%.
The American corporate tax rate is near the highest in the world, topping out at 35%, trailing only Japan which has a 39.5% rate.

Tax rate alone does not define success. Rather it is productivity. Gross national product, or GDP, is the most important factor in successful economies. Confiscatory tax policy has never produced robust economies regardless what time frame in history you look at. It was robust productivity that grew the economy notwithstanding the high tax rates of any particular period in American history.

So once again, please describe how your tax model would improve the economy without taking into consideration productivity.
 
Quote from jueco2005:

The title of the thread is just to attract you to debate here. My position is that such a rate (as it used to be from 1940 to 1980) is not an impediment to economic prosperity. Subsisting high tax rate with debt (as President Regan did and everyone else followed) is the real misery and enslavement.

Most of the industrial world has higher tax rates than the ones we have today. Provide their citizens with labor laws and social programs we are told to be communist. But bailing thieves out and maintaining a super military empire with bases and expensive undeclared wars all over the world is just very capitalistic.
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Yes, providing entitlements and benefits that they can't pay for.

Europe’s $39 Trillion Pension Risk Grows as Economy Falters
Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Even before the euro crisis, people were worried about Europe’s pension bomb.

State-funded pension obligations in 19 of the European Union nations were about five times higher than their combined gross debt, according to a study commissioned by the European Central Bank. The countries in the report compiled by the Research Center for Generational Contracts at Freiburg University in 2009 had almost 30 trillion euros ($39.3 trillion) of projected obligations to their existing populations.

Germany accounted for 7.6 trillion euros and France 6.7 trillion euros of the liabilities, authors Christoph Mueller, Bernd Raffelhueschen and Olaf Weddige said in the report.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...on-pension-risk-grows-as-economy-falters.html

You seem to overlook the fact that none of these countries can cover the obligations which they committed to when they chose socialized democracy as their government model. Except for Germany, the EU is notoriously unproductive, producing very little in the way of goods and services which would provide the tax base to support these entitlements. It's just a lot of nonsense that the EU model has any viability over the long haul. It's merely a matter of time before it implodes.
 
From Der Spiegel today:

"The secret of Germany's saving success is economic growth. The GDP increase of 3 percent last year flushed lots of money into state coffers in the last year. Tax revenues jumped by more than 6 percent -- and that without economy-damaging tax increases."

"But in euro-zone crisis countries the harsh spending cuts and tax increases are creating the expected result: Consumption and investment are down. It follows that the governments' budgetary deficits don't sink, because along with spending the revenues decrease too. … Every European consolidation strategy that focuses on savings at any cost is thus doomed to fail."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,808758,00.html#ref=nlint

This supports what I said above that productivity, not tax rates alone, determine the success or failure of economies. Tax revenues in Germany rose 6% due to productivity, not tax increases.
 
(I just know I'm going to regret this.)

A little research (this stuff only takes five minutes to do. Why no one does it is beyond me):

US average GDP growth, 1948 - 1979: 1.038426809
US average GDP growth, 1980 - 2011: 1.026364652

Source: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=GDPC1

At minimum, higher progressive rates than what we have today don't hurt. That's the actual evidence.
 
Quote from trefoil:

(I just know I'm going to regret this.)

A little research (this stuff only takes five minutes to do. Why no one does it is beyond me):

US average GDP growth, 1948 - 1979: 1.038426809
US average GDP growth, 1980 - 2011: 1.026364652

Source: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=GDPC1

At minimum, higher progressive rates than what we have today don't hurt. That's the actual evidence.
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Well show how higher progressive tax rates help? I think you're overlooking the fact that the period from 1948-1979 after WWII was characterized by an enormous growth in manufacturing. Since 1980, outsourcing of the American manufacturing base has impacted the GDP negatively. Tax rates have very little to do with it. And even with progressive tax rates, what additional revenue collected was not necessarily pumped back into the economy. It was only at the beginning of WWII that the government had to ramp up spending to get the U.S. in shape for the war. They did this mostly with the sale of government bonds, although taxes were increased as well. But that was an exception to the rule due to the stress of war.
There simply is very little evidential relationship between higher taxes and economic productivity.
 
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