End of Liberalism/Return of Fascism

[mrstickball]

richardhutnik said:

mrstickball said:

Unfortunately, I haven't seen data that goes back prior to 1980. However, given the data, its very unlikely that the trend was much different. Unless you can provide something that would suggest otherwise.

Longer would be useful to give things perspective.  However, I will doubt that anyone can say that the effective tax rate on the top 1% is at the highest rate it has been in 60 years.  Paying more of a percentage of taxes is explained by the above though.

Well, all this then points to a potential problem systemically with the economy.  If you are running deficits, with those who aren't at the top falling further and further behind so you can't raise their taxes (and cutting benefits to them accelerates things) then you are faced with a situation where the economy is stuck, and not able to end up freeing up sufficient additional revenues to invest, and thus damages itself long term.  What has been going on is the tax rate on the high end has continued to be reduced, and the economy is losing the middle class.  Could be now there is a systemic structural flaws that would doom the American economy at this point.

To be fair, they've reduced the effective rates on everyone by significant margins. Effective rates among the top 1% have dropped about 30% since the 80s, but dropped 60% on the bottom 50% since the 80s.