Stubby wrote:US Marginal tax rate since permanent collection of income tax (from 1913)
Interesting graph.
During your most prosperous years as a nation right after WWII, the richest paid a high rate.
You want to be as prosperous again? You should probably go back to what was working post WWII.
Funny part of that graph is that it doesn't take into account effective tax rate. The wealthiest pay much less then marginal and eventually much less then the middle class. They've paid politicians for the privilege of paying less tax's and thus shifting most of the tax burden onto the middle class (the poor have no money to pay tax's anyway).
Really crazy part is people keep claiming a "spending problem" yet government expenditures are in-line with other 1st world nations in terms of spending-per-GDP and actually kinda low on spending-per-capita. Once you consider that we've got the most expensive military we end up spending less welfare / subsidence per-capita then the other 1st world nations. When you look at income it's significantly lower per GDP/capita when compared to other 1st world nations.
Of course neither political tribe is willing to cut out the paid-for-privileged groups so the state of things won't change for awhile. We've got another 20 years or so until things get serious. Of course the longer we wait to fix the system the worse off it's going to be.
And no guys, lining up the poor non-producers and their families and gassing them isn't an option. You can't magically kill off everyone who isn't paying into the system, won't work out well for you.
By your own measurement proposal above, our "most expensive military" is getting cheaper.
Of course, the other thought is what the world would look like if we reduced ourselves to a capability level of say, the UK or Germany or some such.
You are talking apples and oranges. Capability means cost. In terms of comparable GDP spending we could have more capability.
Post some numbers of large GDP nations and military spending compared to GDP. Also note, what ever you post for China is an understatement, given that they intentionally obscure actual spending levels.
Once you do that, we will talk more about comparable spending.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)
It also completely ignores the fact that Europe and Japan's industrial capacity had been almost entirely obliterated and we were busy selling them everything they needed to rebuild it.
quixote wrote:It also completely ignores the fact that Europe and Japan's industrial capacity had been almost entirely obliterated and we were busy selling them everything they needed to rebuild it.
You mean that it is the product of encapsulated and concentrated stupidity? Yup.
People keep trying to look at an isolated piece of the system instead of the whole thing.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —
Mary JO White gets a $500 000/year/life from her old lawyer firm and it is unfunded. Should her firm cease operations her 'pension' is gone.
Her old firm represents the banks.
Her new job is Chair of the SEC.
conflict of interest anyone?
And the sham continues...
Everything is bullshit unless proven otherwise. -A.C. Beddoe
