I only have time to read one of those and I just did. This one:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/the-wealth-that-failed-to-trickle-down-report-suggests-rich-do-get-richer-while-poor-stay-poor-9989183.html. It makes your point. It does not address though current idea I had in that it was corporate behavior not just individual wealthy people. Toward the end though it begins to touch on where we are at now globally.

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Elections have consequences.

I'm the CEO of dicklr.ly, the app that tells stories by connecting people with people who will suck you off in the back of a Toyota Camry, and if the government that researched and developed the internet comes after me, I'm moving to Guernsey.

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CH, this article that RPB had provided actually addresses this. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 89183.html. It says it is not a good idea to go back to pre Reagan-Thatcher 75% but better to do a 50%.

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Elections have consequences.

Seriously is that true? That'd be something if the government took 70% of all income from everyone.....the structure of the economy would be radically different. Just think of the payment to income ratios built into mortgage approvals, 32% for a first mortgage. You couldn't even afford that. You'd only get 30% of your income.

Edit: Well here are some theories on that:


The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics reports that a comparison of academic studies yields a range of revenue maximizing rates that centers around 70%.[2] In the early 1980s, Edgar L. Feige and Robert T. McGee developed a macroeconomic model from which they derived a Laffer Curve. According to the model, the shape and position of the Laffer Curve depend upon the strength of supply side effects, the progressivity of the tax system and the size of the unobserved economy.[19][20][21] Economist Paul Pecorino presented a model in 1995 that predicted the peak of the Laffer curve occurred at tax rates around 65%.[22] A draft paper by Y. Hsing looking at the United States economy between 1959 and 1991 placed the revenue-maximizing average federal tax rate between 32.67% and 35.21%.[23] A 1981 article published in the Journal of Political Economy presented a model integrating empirical data that indicated that the point of maximum tax revenue in Sweden in the 1970s would have been 70%.[24] A 2011 paper by Trabandt and Uhlig published in the Journal of Monetary Economics presented a model that predicted that the US and most European economies were on the left of the Laffer curve (in other words, that raising taxes would raise further revenue).

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Lower taxes on corporations has always been a part of trickle down theory. Nothing new.

I have been saying that in my definition or use of trickle down it includes the corporate portion and return of overseas profits that will occur. That will help us all.

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Elections have consequences.

Well things like that would obviously have to be changed.


Don't a lot of European countries have a history of these tax rates?

No, it cites one neoliberal Blairite who thinks that. It's not the position of the author.

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You would be surprised how few Europeans own a home. Also, many of them that do have had it handed down for a hundred years or more.

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Elections have consequences.

I have a question for you, and it's not some "gotcha" (no sideswipe at Rick this time)...

Say we have a tax system with two income tax brackets...

Everyone who makes under $250K pays 15% in taxes.

Everyone who makes over $250K pays 15% on the first 250K and then 65% on everything over that.

The economy is awful, and a lawmaker is pushing hard to drop the 65% tax rate to down around 40%. He argues that this will help the economy in general, including those over 250 and those under 250.

Would you refer to him as a hardcore "trickle down economics" guy?

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I'm pretty sure there was a time in America this century when the effective tax rates on the wealthiest individuals (total) was something like 80 - 90%.

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This was really the Jimmy Carter world we saw in 1980. Most of you are too young to remember seeing 18% mortgages if you could get one at all and what the general economy was like.

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Elections have consequences.

yep, and the only reason we got away with it was due to the fact that every other single industrialized country on the face of the earth was in literal ruins (not an exaggeration of the world from 1945-1961)

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

You mean when we were like the undisputed heavyweight champs of the world?

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

it's really easy to have high taxes when there are no economic competitors left because all of their cities and industrial centers were literally bombed out. Try that taxation today and watch us morph into Venezuela within 1-2 decades.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

I'm not arguing one way or the other, but I'm pretty sure it's a bit more nuanced than that.

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I don't think conditions are right for a 90% marginal rate on the tippity-top but I think we could still raise taxes and lower inequality a fair bit.

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The only way we could get a 90% tax rate to work and not ruin us economically would be for us to start WWIII and make sure every other nation gets bombed to oblivion, but we don't due to our 2 oceans. (better hope no one launches an ICBM or else we'll be with the rest of the world)

Sound like a plan?

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Is there a downside?

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I think the phrase "socialism or barbarism" is a little extreme, but I'm still surprised how many people say "well, okay, then sign me up for barbarism."

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other than a few hundred million dead (on the low side), possible fallout, etc. I can't think of one.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

I don't understand why we can't just raise taxes really high and then just print a ton of money. No more debt and everyone's rich. Problem solved.

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it worked for Zimbabwe!

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

If it can't trickle down how do you make it trickle up? Are you proposing to literally take the money from the top and place it into the pockets of the bottom?

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Elections have consequences.

When I worked construction in college, one of my co-workers asked me the question about printing money. I laughed and then realized he wasn't kidding.

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Shots fired at 312player!

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smh

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We could pay the bottom a livable wage, but hey that's such a terrible concept that you literally think it's worth making fun of!

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

You won't itemize under the new plan dipshit, you'll take the standard deduction.

If you mean universal basic income, I think we're headed that way, probably in my lifetime if I don't off myself from 18+ years of depression first. As we discussed in that other thread the other day, we're successfully liberating ourselves from a lot of drudgery, which is good, but that will mean much fewer jobs, so you'll just have to give people enough money to live on while robots do their work. Some people will use that to innovate and start new businesses, others will pursue their passions and create art and media for one another, others will spend it all on pizza and Netflix, them's the breaks.

But I think our priority is a single-payer healthcare system that removes the market from a sector it never belonged in and places the costs of both providing and eschewing care (which are real, just think about how much sick people must cost the economy!) on the state. That would require raising taxes a bit in addition to reallocating some existing money and taking the insurance providers out of the game. But I think it would be worth it and would do a lot for the quality of life of MANY.

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