[forrestthewoods]

4. Sorry, been flat for 40 years not 50 years.

> The economy has grown substantially; corporate tax contributions, not so much.

Hey wait a second. Why should the PERCENT of corporate tax contributions increase as the economy grows? That doesn't make any sense. Corporate tax percent has been basically flat for 40 years.

The absolute value of corporate contribution has, of course, increase substantially alongside GDP. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FCTAX

Personally I find the whole "tax the rich / tax the corpos" philosophy to be misguided. That's not how countries like Sweden and France pay for robust social services! They do so with extremely regressive taxes (20% or 25% VAT) and very high tax rates (40%+) at relatively low income rates (50k to 80k depending on country).

If we want to decrease inequality and increase social services then the average blue collar worker is going to have to pay for it. Taxing the rich is populism that cares more about being punitive than useful. But I digress.

[sxyuan]

I don't have time to dig into the history of US corporate tax rates, but two things:

1. The effective corporate tax rate has been decreasing over time. Corporations are enormously profitable, and contributing a smaller and smaller share of those profits over time. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_St...

2. The corporate tax rate was cut by the last Trump administration in 2017, which also removed tax brackets and made the rate uniform. So even the nominal rate hasn't been flat.

But at the end of the day, I actually agree with you. There are other ways to raise revenue, and the US needs to decide if it wants to pay to support its old people, its poor people, and its military. Right now, it seems like the answer is trending towards "no".