{"id":39859,"date":"2012-04-18T12:23:58","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T18:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=39859"},"modified":"2012-04-18T12:23:59","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T18:23:59","slug":"why-we-cant-go-back-to-sky-high-1950s-tax-rates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=39859","title":{"rendered":"“Why we can\u2019t go back to sky-high, 1950s tax rates”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aside from common sense reasons, like, eg., money will move offshore and leave the country entirely.<\/p>\n

Jim Pethokoukis<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The top marginal tax rate was 91% during the 1950s. Here\u2019s why we can\u2019t go back:<\/p>\n

1. The 1950s was no Golden Age.<\/strong>\u00a0The U.S. economy grew by an average of 3.4% a year between 1948 and 2007. How did the 1950s do in comparison? If you measure the 1950s from 1950 to 1959, it did a bit better than average, growing at an annual rate of 3.6%. If you measure the decade from 1951 to 1960, it grew at a below average 3.0% rate. The period also saw three recessions, July 1953-May 1954, August 1957-April 1958, and April 1960-February 1961. Now, overall, it was a strong period for the economy, especially for folks with still-fresh memories of the Great Depression. But recall that John F. Kennedy\u2019s 1960 presidential campaign said he would \u201cget this country moving again.\u201d That\u2019s a slogan a politician uses after a decade of stagnation, not hypergrowth. (Of course, JFK sharply cut taxes and the economy boomed.)<\/p>\n

2. Real tax rates were a lot lower.<\/strong>\u00a0Even Levine concedes that \u201cnot\u00a0many people paid that much. Only three baseball players \u2014 Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Willie Mays \u2014 got there.\u201d \u00a0Indeed, the top effective tax rate was probably somewhere between 50-60% because of a tax code full of loopholes. Now that\u2019s still higher than today\u2019s top effective tax rate of around 30%. But those 1950s tax rates actually generated less tax revenue than subsequent periods of lower rates.\u00a0From 1950 to 1963, income tax revenue averaged 7.5 percent of GDP, that\u2019s less than in the Reagan years when rates were being slashed. This could suggest rates are right around the Laffer Curve equilibrium point in the current economy. Indeed, the following chart from the WSJ makes this calculation over a variety of time periods:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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3. \u00a0The post-war U.S. economy was in an incredibly strong international position<\/strong>. Did the the \u201c91% or Bust\u201d crowd forget about World War Two? A National Bureau of Economic Research study<\/a> described the situation this way: \u201cAt the end of World War II, the United States was the dominant industrial producer in the world. With industrial capacity destroyed in Europe\u2014except for Scandinavia\u2014and in Japan and crippled in the United Kingdom, the United States produced approximately 60 percent of the world output of manufactures in 1950, and its GNP was 61 percent of the total of the present (1979) OECD countries. This was obviously a transitory situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re as dominant as the U.S. was, it papers over a lot of bad economic policy coming from Washington. Today, of course American competes with a slew of strong, technologically advanced economies including the EU, China and Japan.<\/p>\n

4. Even economists who argue for higher tax rates don\u2019t want to go back to the 1950s.<\/strong> The New York Times just ran of profile of economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez<\/a>, who are very influential on the left and with the Obama White House. The piece summed up their views: \u201cAs much as Mr. Piketty\u2019s and Mr. Saez\u2019s work has informed the national debate over earnings and fairness, their proposed corrective remains far outside the bounds of polite political conversation: much, much higher top marginal tax rates on the rich, up to 50 percent, or 70 percent or even 90 percent, from the current top rate of 35 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

So 91% or bust? Not so fast. Here is Piketty\u00a0in another interview:<\/a><\/p>\n

Does the fact that the United States did it in the past necessarily imply that we should immediately return to 80-90 percent top marginal rates? Of course not. \u2026 It could be that the right level is 70 or 60 percent. \u2026 Most importantly, I said very explicitly that I was talking about very, very high incomes, and that at least 99.5 percent of the population would be unaffected by this new top rate. \u2026\u00a0I firmly believe that imposing a 70 or 80 percent marginal rate on large segments of the population (say, 25 percent of the population, or even 10 percent, or even a few percentage points) would lead to an economic disaster. And I made very clear that the reason I propose to focus on the very top end because this is where the labour market and the pay determination process are not working properly\u2014or, more accurately, have completely gotten out of hand.<\/tt><\/p>\n

And, of course, an ultrahigh tax rate on an initially small slice of the population, like Obama\u2019s Buffett rule imposes, would neither raise very much revenue not do anything to create jobs. And look at what just happened in Great Britain. Their Independent Fiscal Oversight Commission \u2014 which reviews all of the budgetary assumptions \u2014 just ruled that cutting the top rate of tax from 50 to 45 was revenue neutral, implying the revenue maximizing rate is in that range. The Brits don\u2019t have state income taxes which implies by extension that our revenue maximizing federal rate is lower than theirs \u2014 a whole lot lower than 70,80 or 90%.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gimmicks like the Buffett rule are not meant to be serious policy positions.\u00a0 They are instead cynical (and obvious) political<\/em> ploys in the service of a greater narrative, namely, the Marxist socialist narrative favored by the left, which relies on scapegoats and “speculators” and identity politics warfare to keep us distracted while the governing class colludes with big business to form a liberal fascist state — which I’ve long argued is the preferred resting place of Marxist Utopians:\u00a0 the ruling class and big corporations join forces in a way that is mutually beneficial, with the partnership serving at once to drive competition from the marketplace while simultaneously entrenching a centralized command-and-control economy through bureaucracies, taxes, and the regulatory apparatus of the State.<\/p>\n

In Edward Bellamy’s socialist Utopia, Looking Backward<\/em>, the final stage, following from liberal fascism, was for the government to then take over those big corporations through nationalization, thus “evolving” us from a capitalist free market society into a society fully run by a ruling bureaucracy — benevolent, of course, with the masses perfectly content in the end with their new secure positions.<\/p>\n

But that last step, the ruling class correctly surmised, is unnecessary and in fact, counterproductive:\u00a0 there are certain perks that come with being the decider that disappear once everything is decided.\u00a0 And besides, a society in the liberal fascist state can keep up the trappings of representative government — even though so much of what government does is beyond the reach of the voters or even a given political party.<\/p>\n

So. May as well keep up the perception of liberty if it don’t cost you anything to do so, right?\u00a0 I mean, what good is it to be a rank cynic if you can’t take advantage of that missing moral compass…?<\/p>\n

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Aside from common sense reasons, like, eg., money will move offshore and leave the country entirely. Jim Pethokoukis: The top marginal tax rate was 91% during the 1950s. Here\u2019s why we can\u2019t go back: 1. The 1950s was no Golden Age.\u00a0The U.S. economy grew by an average of 3.4% a year between 1948 and 2007. How did the 1950s do in comparison? If you measure the 1950s from 1950 to<\/p>\n

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