837
Compared to 37 today
(i.redd.it)
And really only included white Christians.
And men. Single women had few options.
Don't forget it took a democratic US president getting elected four times in a row to set up that tax rate. This tax status took about 30 years to fully reverse.
And once we did in 1983 the US government took in more not less tax revenue. Your top marginal tax rate can be too high and 91% was too high
The US government took in less total tax revenue in 1983 compared to 1982. Do you have a source?
They infact did not have a source
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But then they'd have to dodge taxes by reinvesting in their company's reputation and their workers. Instead of just cashing out, they'd have to maintain the company reputation as an asset that would pay them forever, as long as the company stayed healthy.
Is that what we really want?
There were very few people this applied to.
The real reason is the corporate tax rate. It was 52%. Today it’s 21%, and it’s effectively close to zero for many corporations with the tax loopholes used to avoid taxation. Shell corporations, deferring taxes, what have you.
So the US has lost more than 50% of the corporate taxes collected since the ‘50s.
E: the decline in tax % is pretty closely followed by the dramatic rise in CEO compensation.
The wealth being funneled to the top by cutting corporate tax got us the billionaire oligarchs we’re dealing with today.
We are long overdue for a hard reset. We need a new government with a modern democracy, then the assets of the top 0.1% need to be nationalized. Let them keep enough wealth to still be in the top 10%, but hit them hard and fast. Also, we should do what china does and to end offshoring by forcing companies to sell 20% of their company to the US government if they want access to our markets. Next, we need tax breaks for companies who spend more money compensating their workers than giving money to the parasitic shareholders.
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And the highest rate of union membership in US history.
Go to Iceland if you want the good working conditions!
That's cool, maybe we should try to bring good working conditions to where we already are, though.
Anyone with a billion dollars should be taxed at 110%
I hate that people will argue that highly taxing billionaires is disciplining success. Really? In what way? At what point is the success of their brand, product, or company no longer really theirs? When you're a megacorp with hundreds of thousands of employees what about the success they are producing? It's preposterous to keep holding these oligarchs up on a pedestal and continuing to pretend that they add any real benefit to anything other than the optics their PR people invent for them.
Also, define success. Please, seriously, just do.
Billionaires have failed as humans. They are complete failures. Zero respect for them or their means of money grabbing.
Agreed. Also, billionaires like Musk would still be able to skirt around those taxes by sharing his wealth with his 50 children and baby mamas so it wouldn't even hurt him, it would just limit how much power a single person could have.
I never understood what you guys mean when you say they should be taxed more. Like.. they are taxed for their income under the same laws you are?
Billionaires are not literally sitting atop a pile of a billion dollars in cash. Their "wealth" is unrealised, which means it's the net worth of assets that they haven't cashed in. In most cases they can't cash in their wealth in even if they wanted. How will you tax them on money they just don't have?
Tax them on loans against those assets. If they can spend it, it's fucking income. Enough bullshit.
Fair enough.
Regardless of their wealth being in M1, M2, or M3, it is wealth taken off the backs of the working class and given to the hands of a few people. Taxing it is the most conservative approach to giving it back to the people who actually created that wealth; it's a solution that works within the existing political system.
Money itself is an abstraction for wealth. Sometimes, it can be a useful one. But take the abstraction away and think about the stuff it actually represents. Taxing that "unrealized wealth" may reduce GDP in a technical sense, but GDP is an abstraction built on an abstraction. Constantly rising GDP is not a good end goal in itself. Ensuring that everyone has their basic needs met is a much better one.
Lots of big words but nothing of value. Answer the question buddy, how will you tax people on money they don't have?
They will sell it.
That's why I say it's going to cause a drop in GDP, but that's only a problem if you hold tightly to the abstraction.
It won't be just a "drop in GDP". It will be investments falling apart, industries closing down, credit getting scarce, unemployment, misery, destitution and death.
Money is a very real driver of the world. It is also the realest manifestation of wealth. Only a fool would call it an abstraction.
What else would it be but an abstraction? As I said, it's sometimes a useful one, but it's an abstraction. It's not dirt or concrete or computer chips or food.
Maybe we shouldn't build a whole society around an abstraction like that?
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That’s right folks, if you want prosperity, eat the fuckin rich
The wealth was also built on the back of exploited Afro Americans. Remember that even Brown happened in the middle of the fifties.
Yes but that was when manufacturing was 33% of the workforce.
Today it’s only 8%. Machinery and robots do the labor and generate extreme wealth in tech and other spaces.
So theoretically you would not REQUIRE the same degrees of exploitation to achieve a middle class similar to that time period.
The win of factory and laborers work is unionization. Tech means decentralized workforce and less likelihood to trust your peers and unionize which was one of the largest wins of the 50s. When you are rubbing elbows with your coworkers - and are geographically living through similar cost of living as your colleagues - you are more likely to strike or require the same or similar types of improvements at the same moments.
What people in the US are failing to understand is that there are still good manufacturing jobs in the US today. Pharmaceuticals, aerospace, biotech, etc. They’re just on the higher end and require some type of technical or bachelors degree. Although, with the current regime and how they want to run (or not run) education, makes it seem like they want to bring us back to a developing country status where labor standards are low and manufacturing jobs are “low skilled.”
Yeah totally agree - which should make workers movements that prioritize wins for all American workers the goal. Child care / education systems that work / health care coverage that works - helps the 8% rugged manufacturing as well as like 50% of the active work force. Vs. bringing back high labor work / low skill - which if we pull it off would mean I what? 2-4% expansion of those industries? So…. 12% of the workforce would be prioritized? (as they expand those sectors).
Internal manufacturing to secure specific interests makes sense. (Medical supplies like during COVID or reduction of reliance from certain super powers sure.
But the current admin is at odds with financing sectors or even stimulating or supporting sectors with policy (it’s actively cutting and damaging policy in them) while also slamming tariffs across the very same sectors.
So it makes no sense. But that’s what I figured going into all this. We are reducing class mobility, while reducing health and safety, with every policy and cut. While increasing the debt simultaneously. It’s wild.
Ronald Reagon and his trickle-down economics.
Yes, but don't forget that liberals had many many chances to undo the damage Republicans did but they never would. Why? Because liberals are capitalists and capitalist politicians ultimately serve the capital class first and foremost
Except that is entirely incorrect? It is almost solely because the USA was 50% of the world economy at the time. Restoring the top marginal tax rate to 91% will not return us to prosperity
I say let’s try anyway
agreed. taxing the ultra rich is the only legal method available to the 99% to redistribute wealth back down the masses who have been systematically robbed and exploited and manipulated by oligarchs. who cares if revenues go up or down? either we tax the robber barons or we seize their assets... or our kids and grandkids will be destitute.
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Anyone that thinks these fascists running the country want to go back to the 1950s hasn’t been paying attention. They want to go back to 1850s, when women and minorities were second class citizens or not citizens at all and white Anglo Saxon Christian men ran everything.
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And the 50s were a horrible time for women!!
How’d we get there at the time? Was it public political will? The need to fund the world wars? Did we always have high rates and only in the last few decades back off from that being the norm?
We had high tax rates which is entirely unrelated to the prosperity of the 1950s which was based on the USA comprising 50% of the world economy.
We cut the rates in 1983 and took in more revenue overall which indicates that a top marginal rate can be set high enough to encourage tax fraud, tax evasion, and tax avoidance. This is what Laffer suggested at a cocktail party and is now known as “The Laffer Curve”
They said, posting on threads and supporting said billionaires prosperity.
post it to fedi and you're preaching to the choir
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this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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