US Presidential Candidates

So. Mitch McConnell.

Hypocritical shit or scared leader trying to save his country?

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Imaginos1892 wrote:They never mentioned paying for it all, except for some vague promises to 'tax the rich' into poverty. And when they make the rich poor, how are they supposed to pay for anything? But wait, it's all free!
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Ma Lemming: If all your friends jumped off a cliff into the sea, would you...oh...um...nevermind.

Actually, both Clinton and Sanders presented fairly detailed plans as to how they intended to pay for their proposals. You could argue whether or not those plans were realistic, but the certainly existed.

And it rather fails as a comparative point, given that one of the first actions of the new, Republican controlled legislature was to authorize a significant ($10 trillion over a decade) increase in the debt and that Trump has already given the go-ahead for his wall without seemingly any firm idea as to how he's going to pay for it.

Since the common perception is that the US economy was doing fantastically in the 1950s, below is the federal tax rates and GDP data for 1954 and 1955 (middle of the 1950s).

In 1954, filing as single or married filling separately, the federal income tax rate was 91% for incomes over $1,707,019 (in 2013 dollars) and the minimum tax rate was 20%.

In 1955, filing as single or married filling separately, the federal income tax rate was 91% for incomes over $1,713,388 (in 2013 dollars) and the minimum tax rate was 20%.

The US GDP grew ~6.5% between 12/31/1954 and 12/31/1955.


The maximum tax rate under the Sanders plan is 52%, which was less than the maximum tax rate was between 1932 (63%) and 1981 (70%). The US GDP grew 821.5% ($0.79 trillion to $6.49 trillion) during those 50 years.

Sources:
https://taxfoundation.org/us-federal-individual-income-tax-rates-history-1913-2013-nominal-and-inflation-adjusted-brackets
http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-inflation-adjusted/table

Imaginos1892 wrote:When was the last time any of their tax schemes took in what they promised? They believe their tax increases do not have consequences to the people taxed, to the economy, or to our ruinous trade deficit.

There were more loopholes in that '50's tax code than there is now. No one paid that 90% tax rate. All that marginal rate did was to highly incent people to use the loopholes. Given the income threshold, they could afford lawyers to restructure their affairs to more efficiently take advantage of those loopholes. AAMoF, Paul Newman played just such a lawyer in The Young Philadelphians (1959).

PeterZ wrote:There were more loopholes in that '50's tax code than there is now. No one paid that 90% tax rate.

Yes... estimates I've seen said they actually paid closer to 50-60% top marginal rates.

You know, right where Sanders wants to put that rate. And they did just damn fine, and so did the country.

gcomeau wrote:

PeterZ wrote:There were more loopholes in that '50's tax code than there is now. No one paid that 90% tax rate.

Yes... estimates I've seen said they actually paid closer to 50-60% top marginal rates.

You know, right where Sanders wants to put that rate. And they did just damn fine, and so did the country.

Not an apples to apples comparison, my friend. Throughout the 1950's the rest of the world had just completed rebuilding their decimated industries from WWII. The US manufacturing sector still had a massive advantage in production of just about everything. The US could have passed along higher costs and still managed to sell a sh**load to the rest of the world.

Try that now, and everyone will clean out clocks. We no longer have any serious advantage in almost any industry. Even our pharma industry gets hammered as other nations refuse to pay for the full R&D costs of our medicines. Higher taxes will mean higher prices which lead to lower sales of products produced domestically and sales of exports.

PeterZ wrote:

gcomeau wrote:Yes... estimates I've seen said they actually paid closer to 50-60% top marginal rates.

You know, right where Sanders wants to put that rate. And they did just damn fine, and so did the country.

Not an apples to apples comparison, my friend. Throughout the 1950's the rest of the world had just completed rebuilding their decimated industries from WWII. The US manufacturing sector still had a massive advantage in production of just about everything. The US could have passed along higher costs and still managed to sell a sh**load to the rest of the world.

Try that now, and everyone will clean out clocks. We no longer have any serious advantage in almost any industry. Even our pharma industry gets hammered as other nations refuse to pay for the full R&D costs of our medicines. Higher taxes will mean higher prices which lead to lower sales of products produced domestically and sales of exports.

Please, do walk me through how higher top marginal *income tax* rates translate into higher product prices. I'm all ears.

GC, that one is obvious.
If the executives after tax income drops due to tax rates, they will increase their pay or restructure it to overcompensate.
Which of course pushes costs up ...

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Annachie wrote:GC, that one is obvious.
If the executives after tax income drops due to tax rates, they will increase their pay or restructure it to overcompensate.
Which of course pushes costs up ...

But that as not a required outcome of the tax. It's not like taxing the product where there is no way around that impacting cost.


What you really just said is essentially "Rich CEOs who want more money will pay themselves more."

Sure, they *could* do that if their tax rates went up. They also *could* so that right now and there's absolutely no difference between those two scenarios. They *could* do that after you cut their taxes. Those two things are decoupled from each other.


So trying to blame it on tax rates is a smokescreen... increasing the costs would be a decision they made on their own, not an outcome of the tax rate change.

Or we could just quit worrying about loopholes, dodges etc and just put in a flat tax (with a floor)