Report:Fallacy about tax rates and economic growth

The top income tax rates have changed considerably since the end of World War II. Throughout  the late-1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was typically above 90%; today it is 35%.  Additionally, the top capital gains tax rate was 25% in the 1950s and 1960s, 35% in the 1970s;   today it is 15%. The average tax rate faced by the top 0.01% of taxpayers was above 40% until  the mid-1980s; today it is below 25%. Tax rates affecting taxpayers at the top of the income  distribution are currently at their lowest levels since the end of the second World War.
The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate  and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The  top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie.
However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing  concentration of  income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income  accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before   falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the  top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to  how the economic pie is sliced—lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.

This is from a report from the Congressional Research Service (2012)

Fantasyland (article by Frank Rich)

Mitt Romney is already slithering into the mists of history, or at least La Jolla, gone and soon to be forgotten. A weightless figure unloved and distrusted by even his own supporters, he was always destined, win or lose, to be a transitory front man for a radical-right GOP intent on barreling full-speed down the Randian path laid out by its true 2012 standard-bearer, Paul Ryan. But as was said of another unsuccessful salesman who worked the New England territory, attention must be paid to Mitt as the door slams behind him in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s brilliant victory. Though Romney leaves no political heirs in his own party or elsewhere, he does leave a cultural legacy of sorts. He raised Truthiness to a level of chutzpah beyond Stephen Colbert’s fertile imagination, and on the grandest scale. That a presidential hopeful so cavalierly mendacious could get so close to the White House, winning some 48 percent of the popular vote, is no small accomplishment. The American weakness that Romney both apotheosized and exploited in achieving this feat—our post-fact syndrome where anyone on the public stage can make up anything and usually get away with it—won’t disappear with him. A slicker liar could have won, and still might.

Stockman: “Jobs outlook worse than people think”

David Stockman served as budget director in the Reagan Administration and was considered one of the architects of the modern tax system. Since then he’s had a change of heart. In the last six months he’s made a clean break from his own legacy. The topic of the break concerns the Bush Tax Cuts.
We’ve heard a lot about how the economy has created one million jobs since the end of the recession in 2009, but until recently we haven’t heard anyone break down what those jobs are like.
That changed last week when David Stockman appeared on CNBC.

“The jobs that they count every month and people get excited about are really part-time jobs,” he said.

gjohnsit’s diary :: ::
Stockman separates the “breadwinning jobs” – jobs that average $50,000 a year – from the part-time jobs – jobs averaging $20,000 a year. Once you do that it you start to see a clear reason for working class discontent. from DKOS

Boehner’s Jobs Plan for China, India and Mexico

e all know that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has a long record of fighting just about every initiative that could give a working family a bit of help as we’re shoveling out the debris left over from the years when Boehner, Bush et al. were in charge of the economy.

Most recently, he led the House Republican fight against jobs legislation designed to prevent the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, public employees, police officers and firefighters. What do you think Boehner would do if he and the Republicans were back in the majority?

This new TV ad gives us a glimpse. It notes Boehner’s opposition to the jobs bill and highlights his real goal.

Boehner has a different plan: Tax cuts for businesses and those that shift jobs and profits overseas. Saving multinational corporations $10 billion.

So to China and India and Mexico, Boehner has a message: You’re welcome. from AFL-CIO Now Blog

Mr. Boehner, Where are the jobs?

That is what Keith Olbermann asks. That is what I want to know. Where are they? So the upper income people are the ones who are supposed to be creating the jobs. How many jobs were created by the upper income individuals in 2010? I want names and numbers and evidence. Tired of being treated like a fool and lied to. Boehner said the upper income people are the job creators. Time to tell him to provide evidence to back up this statement. I am tired of the trickle down theory which has been proven to not work. Why are we okay with the lies?

Elitism, Oligarchy and Democracy

This is from a dailykos blogger/contributor 0n 10/20/08

One of the things that always amazed and bothered me was that the overwhelming majority of people who rose to the top of and were most successful at the schools that I attended and companies that I worked for were themselves the children of powerful and successful parents. Not that they necessarily lacked it, but they didn’t get to where they were merely on merit. And I’m not just talking favoratism, although there was surely much of that, but also the inherited and absorbed wisdom, smarts, experience, sophistication, etc., that they got from their parents and their friends and relatives. They entered the world with huge advantages, which I don’t begrudge them, but which most people simply do not have, making it much, much harder for them to succeed in a world which such people tend to dominate.

Our society used to be much better at leveling the playing field to the extent possible, in the form of a great public education system, and with companies offering great post-education professional “grooming” in the post-WWII years to fill vast new numbers of job openings that couldn’t possibly be filled by the children of the well-off alone. This is no longer the case. Public schools are awful for the most part (I was lucky enough to attend an excellent one), and companies tend to hire for specific slots, and grooming is more and more a thing of the past, as privileged graduates of top schools get tracked to the top, and everyone else gets shoved into a vast assembly line where you’re basically interchangeable and easy to replace, in a dead-end job. It’s still possible for someone of limited means to rise to the top, but much harder than it used to be.

Obama, of course, is the exception, but one that proves the rule, as he’s clearly an exceptional person who would have succeeded anywhere. But these days, if you’re not already from a privileged background, or exceptionally smart and ambitious, it’s very hard to gain entry into the upper levels of the professional world. Which makes one wonder just how many talented people are stuck somewhere, unable to realize their potential and maximally contribute to society, because society is no longer interested in making it easier for them to do this. It’s like we’re all driving on the highway, with a privileged few on the express lane and moving fast, and the rest of us stuck in the local lane, moving slow, and unable to move into the express lane.

If Dems can get us back to a move level playing field, they will not only help millions, and society, but themselves as well, as they’ll be winning over a generation or two of loyal voters (which the GOP knows, and is part of the reason why they worked so hard to make government fail, because successful government invariably leads to left-wing dominance). This has to happen. The inbred nth-generation offspring of the country’s rich and powerful elites are unfit to lead the country, and a massive change of leadership is called for. And a new generation of leaders has to be groomed for it.

McCain Hates the Gooks

“I hate the gooks,” McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. “I will hate them as long as I live.”

Yes. I know he was held captive by the North Vietnamese. He himself admits he has hatred inside him. This could also be why he is so angry. He called his wife an obscene name. He does not have the temperament to be president. I know Bill Clinton got angry sometimes, too, but John McCain was tortured and has reason to be angry. He has had too much trauma to be President. Maybe has nightmares about his imprisonment. I think he has been too damaged psychologically to be president. Unfortunate for him but this is not someone we want in the most stressful job in the world. We need someone who can be calm under pressure. He just has too much of a bad temper.

FPL to raise electric bills

Our electric bills are going up in August and again in 2009. How do these people expect us to live? We have a lot of senior citizens in Florida on social security. Seems they do not give a damn about us. Is this increase in electric bills and in gasoline prices going to be reflected in the next cost of living adjustment? The proposed COLA for 2009 is 2.8 percent. With that kind of small increase, more and more people are going to fall behind and will not be able to keep up with the increased expenses.

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