Income Tax Rate History: Years 1913 - 2010

[Xicano]

I have a question. I am puzzled over why I sometimes hear conservatives mention the 1950's as an example for an economic model. Didn't we at that time have a more regulated consumer-side economic model, and where the rich paid far more in taxes?

Here's a document showing the history of marginal tax rates between 1913 to 2010. Wow what a difference between then and now, but, then I am puzzled as to why conservatives who cry, kick and scream over raising taxes on the rich would mentioned the 1950's economy in endearing terms.

But then again why should I be surprised to see yet another contradiction to reality by the conservatives. lol


For the lurking right-wingers here you go. Tax Rate History for the years 1913 - 2010.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fed_individual_rate_history-20100923.pdf

[slackmaster]

1. I remember well my parents getting hit with the 42% bracket for 1975

My dad had gotten one of the best raises he'd ever had, and his daughter (my stepsister) finished college so he was relieved of making child support payments. His ex-wife had re-married a couple of years earlier, so alimony payments were just a bad memory. Things were really looking up for us financially. I got accepted into UC, and because of heavy state subsidies on tuition we were able to see financing my college education without any loans. (I also worked the whole time I was at UC.)

The property tax on the family home took a big jump that year too. That plus the high federal and state income taxes took a big bite out of my parents' newly earned prosperity. They weren't at all pleased about that.

Three years later, in the election of 1978, we all voted Yes on California's Proposition 13.

People who show you old tax tables and say "See this? Rates were much higher back in 19xx!" never bother to mention that very few people actually paid the highest rates.

[Xicano]

3. Thanks Slackmaster.

Thanks for the point you make. Would it be fair to say the reason why few people actually paid the highest rates is because our economic model was more consumer-sided (trickle-up) vs supply-sided (trickle down)? Or would that be off-point?

[slackmaster]

4. The relationship between workers and employers was different in the past

Take my dad for an example:

He was born into poverty <fast-foward>, joined the Navy just in time to have to serve out World War II, stayed in until a comfortable retirement point in 1956.

He quickly found a job as an electronic systems design engineer for a defense contractor. He worked for the same company until he retired in 1987.

His salary was always low for what he did, compared to what design engineers make now. But he had solid job security most of the time, and excellent benefits - Defined-benefit retirement plan, stock purchase plan, and privileges like parking his RV on the company back lot for $5 per month. There was no health insurance benefit, because people paid for most of their health care out of pocket until fairly recently in history.

He was living in a 16-foot travel trailer on that lot when he met my mom. His divorce was very costly. :-)

Other than getting laid off a handful of times, always briefly, he never had to worry about whether he was going to have a job. I grew up into a very different world. I've never been completely sure that I would be working at all six months in the future, much less at the same job. Dual incomes are now the norm for people who raise children. When I was a child, not nearly as many women worked. There were a lot of older ladies around who had Rosie the Riveter jobs during World War II.

The housing costs I've faced all of my adult life have been much higher than anything earlier generations faced. The shrinking of the middle class is very real to me. Staying in it has not been easy. I don't accept the idea that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet having billions of dollars is holding anyone else back, but it does seem that life has gotten harder for the middle.

I can't really answer your question, Xicano, but I think people have a different idea of what government is about now as opposed to decades ago as well. I think people are more deeply sucked into their careers now, and have a higher dependence on money. Sometimes I feel like I was born at the wrong time.

[On the Road]

5. I Think It's Part of the Issue

that the highest marginal rate begins at such a low point. There was even a time in the 1988 when the marginal rate on $100k was 39%, but the marginal rate on income over $335k went down to 34%.

THAT is an issue, and it helped to create the great disparity of wealth we have today.

[slackmaster]

8. CEO salaries weren't nearly as outrageous as they are now before the 1980s

Inflation notwithstanding, being worth a million dollars actually put you in the upper class when I was a kid.

[SmileyRose]

2. In the 50's it helped that we blew the shit out of European and Japanese manufacturing.

If anyone wanted anything we were pretty much the only place to get it.

[Lyric]

6. Okay to be fair, Europe blew the shit out of their manufacturing

mostly by themselves. We helped some, of course, and so did Russia, but most of the job was done by the bigger European nations who were the powerhouses behind the war--Germany, France, England, Italy, etc. We entered the war so late that we really can't claim much credit for the level of European destruction.

Japan, however--yeah, that was totally us.

[SmileyRose]

7. correction accepted.

I always scratch my head when my 90 yr old father in law waxes on about why can't we live like we did in the 50's when globalism was not possible, women were sent back to the kitchen and blacks were barely tolerated in the workforce at all, and only in certain parts of the country.

All he knows is he wants his country back. Sigh.

[Lyric]

11. Yeah. How can you explain to someone like that that "his country"

never really existed to begin with--that the good parts were an illusionary bubble, and applied only to middle-class white Christian straight people? For everyone who WASN'T a middle-class white Christian straight person, those years were an utter nightmare. I don't get why certain people simply cannot comprehend this fact. They were living on third base, and now that their fortunate "inning" is over and they have to go back to running ALL the bases like the rest of us (and like their own parents), they're angry. Talk about an entitlement complex.

[bemildred]

9. Political propaganda has diddle to to with history, never did.

Lying, exaggeration, and making things up is the norm.

[bemildred]

10. FWIW, history shows - IMHO - that high progressive taxation makes the economy go like gangbusters.

But some rich people hate it, it makes them pay through the nose.

[Lyric]

13. Of course it does. High progressive taxes mean that the working class

has the wealth and health to participate in the economy. When the working class is unhealthy and poor, who's going to buy the goods that keep companies in business?

[Motown_Johnny]

12. selective memory