Quote from tomdavis:
You keep insisting that rich people paid high taxes. They did not. Let me repeat what I said in my previous post. Rich people in the 1950s-1960s paid about 23% of their income in federal taxes due to the utilization of tax shelters (leveraged non-recourse) and offshore banking. The very wealthiest people in the country (eg, Rockefellers) kept large portions of their wealth out of the country and away from the IRS. There never were high "effective" taxes for rich people in this country, only high "published" tax rates.
Also, do some research on per capita government spending on federal social programs and education in the 1950's and 1960s. Adjusted for inflation, it was 50% LESS back then than it is now. There is more government redistribution of wealth today than there was back then. In the 1950s-1960s the largest part of the budget was spent on fighting the Korean War, Vietnam War and a massively expensive Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Unions did improve standards of living for the middle class in the 1950s-1960s, but that was because the US was a virtual manufacturing monopolist for 20 years after WWII. Large manufacturers could not easily move to a low-cost location back then, so they gave the unions high wages in exchange for not striking. The manufacturers then passed those higher wage costs along to their customers in the form of higher prices. That's impossible in today's competitive global manufactruing environment.
There is only one way to level the global playing field and keep America prosperous. The way it's being done now will only result in a dramatically lower standard of living for the general public.
Taken from another board in which I'm in full agreement:
U.S. companies move their businesses and manufacturing as well as Blue and White Collar jobs OVERSEAS.....because THEY CAN! Why can they? Its because over 20 years ago Ronald Reagan destroyed this country's Import Tariff Tax and Trade Laws that had been in existence from the birth of this nation until the 1980's!
America had sensible trade-Tariff taxes and laws that kept both Corporate America honest from leaving the U.S. for cheap labor while dis-employing America workers and discouraged if not out right prevented 3rd world country with exploited cheap labor and dumping/sending their goods and productions into the U.S. Economy unfairly and cheaply.
Prior to Reagan blowing up our country's "FAIR TRADE" Import Tariff Tax Laws, American companies had to think twice before just shutting down Companies and moving overseas in search of cheap labor and profits w/o having to deal with the reality of getting charged an import tariff tax equal too how much those same products would have cost to be produced in the U.S. Likewise, foreign companies could not dump their cheaply made products into the U.S. economy if their products were made with cheap exploited labor. These 3rd world countries were also made to pay a tariff tax equal to the amount it would have cost to produce the same products in the U.S.
These import tariff tax-trade laws were in place? It was to prevent what we see happening today and over the last 25 years, where the U.S. now see's its trade imbalances in the neighborhood in the $100's of billions with no end-in sight! Prior Reagan destroying our U.S. import tariff tax laws this country did not have the monetary trade imbalance as we see today. Since the 80's over 42,000 U.S. manufacturers have left the U.S. to take up business for cheap exploited 3rd world labor. And 75% of those manufactures employed 500 U.S. workers or more!
From the founding of this country, our operational principle was: If there's a dollar's worth of labor in a pair of shoes made here, and you can make the same shoes in some other "cheap labor" country with 10 cents' worth of labor, there will be a 90-cent import tax (tariff) when you bring them into the country, to protect our domestic industries and our manufacturing jobs. Tariffs level the field for both American business and American labor. Without tariffs the only winners are the East India Company's modern incarnations-- the multinational corporations (which is why the multinationals push so hard for the WTO and other such institutions, treaties, and trade agreements).
This is not a new idea, by the way-- it's how America has protected its economy from the founding of this nation right up until Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT. The first law imposing tariffs was in place before the Constitution was ratified in 1789. Tariffs represented 100 percent of federal government revenues from the founding of this nation until around the time of the Civil War and about a third of our total federal revenues up to World War I. They were still a major source of revenue right into the 1980s, when Reagan first took a whack at them.
