[estimator7292]

The US government was pretty decent up until ~50-100 years ago. Pretty standard, functional democracy. Lots of money and effort spent on improving the physical and social environment for the betterment of the people. You know, normal, expected stuff from a functioning government.

[reenorap]

Up until the US went into debt to fund the arms race, things were great. Now that there's so much debt and unfettered financial engineering by Wall Street, the idea we can get get back to "the American Dream is a home with a white picket fence" is impossible.

[cogman10]

"The American Dream" was made possible by government spending to subsidize home purchases. The 1950s housing act.

America was great when the pocket books of the government were open to public spending and funded primarily by high taxes on the rich. In the 1950s the top marginal tax rate was 90%.

What made america great was taxing the hell out of the rich and big business to the point where they'd rather invest in their employees and companies. That's what drove the innovation and quality of life improvements throughout the 50s and 60s. We abandoned that in the late 70s onwards because of an economic downturn that hit everyone. Rather than just powering through it we went with "Let's just tear down everything" and now we are dealing with what the government was like in the gilded age of the 1920s. Stories of corruption, corporate capture, and scandal are nearly identical to what we see today.

We need a new deal.

[potato3732842]

>"The American Dream" was made possible by government spending to subsidize home purchases. The 1950s housing act.

No, it wasn't. The american dream was the reality of huge swaths of the middle class. Who do you think all those pre-1950 single family homes were built for? And of those that didn't live in a single family dwelling, the other inhabitants of a multi-family was often related to them.

The subsidy just made it a little more accessible down-market.

>What made america great was taxing the hell out of the rich

Um, what? Look at tax receipts relative to GDP. We've never taxed harder than we do now. Even if you assume we took it all from the rich back then it was still less.

The only way this comment only holds if you look at fed income tax only and you look at the nominal rate, which is farcical.

[tern]

I see arguments like this all the time these days, and it feels important to me to have the story straightened out.

Can anyone recommend a resource that comes to a definitive, non-partisan conclusion (even if the answer is: "it's complicated," or "neither")?

(Separately, it's interesting to ask LLMs questions like this: https://chatgpt.com/share/68cc9e37-8a2c-800e-aeef-dc88977f56...)

[ckemere]

https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/80552/total-tax...

(Though this doesn’t capture top end federal income tax rate.)

[dh2022]

Re: "Look at tax receipts relative to GDP. We've never taxed harder than we do now. " - would you mind sharing some data sources for this. Thanks a lot!

[chessgecko]

Wouldn’t say never harder, but it’s been pretty flat.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

[theteapot]

Crude starting point from ChatGPT:

  U.S. Corporate Tax Revenue as a Percentage of GDP (1900–2020s)
  Decade Corporate Tax Revenue as % of GDP
  1900s ~0.1%
  1910s ~0.5%
  1920s ~0.8%
  1930s ~1.0%
  1940s ~4.0%
  1950s ~4.3%
  1960s ~3.5%
  1970s ~3.0%
  1980s ~2.5%
  1990s ~2.5%
  2000s ~1.3%
  2010s ~1.0%
  2020s (est.) ~1.0% (varies slightly)

  U.S. Individual Income Tax Revenue as a Percentage of GDP (1900-2020s)
  Decade Income Tax Revenue as % of GDP
  1900s ~0.0%
  1910s ~0.5%
  1920s ~1.5%
  1930s ~3.5%
  1940s ~7.5%
  1950s ~8.0%
  1960s ~8.0%
  1970s ~8.5%
  1980s ~8.0%
  1990s ~8.0%
  2000s ~8.5%
  2010s ~8.0%
  2020s (est.) ~8.0% (varies slightly)

[kingkawn]

“a little more accessible” is condescension of the poor

[reenorap]

When the US has a surplus with no debt, as it was pre-Nuclear Arms race, they can afford to do things like be generous with housing, etc. We can't do that now because we have too much debt, and most of the money is being funneled to the elites.

[ckemere]

We had a surplus under Clinton (well after Nuclear Arms race) which was parlayed into deficit by Bush tax cuts.

[reenorap]

I misused the word "surplus". Surplus is talking about a net positive in terms of government income less spending. What I meant was total government debt. Yes we had surpluses under Clinton but the US was still deeply in debt. We went from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in the world under Ronald Reagan.

[terminalshort]

Most of the money is being funneled to the old. The US government is an insurance company with an army.

[reenorap]

From Obama until now, the income gap between the wealthy and regular people has skyrocketed. Most of the new money being generated in our economy is going into the pockets of the top 0.1% and none is going into the bottom 50%.

[terminalshort]

The actual numbers show it rising during Obama and being flat ever since https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134

[themafia]

To me it was WW2 and the lingering "intelligence apparatus" it spawned. We went from using our resources for national security and started using it to steal banana plantation land and contracts in South America. It went from a necessary evil to a clandestine service available to the highest bidder.

[rurban]

Yes, it was Franklin Roosevelts declining health and death the fascists took over. They already brought Hitler to power, and from then on took over their state. They planned, but didn't need their Business Plot.

[ckemere]

Lots of comments below. I think Reagan “Government doesn’t help” campaign + (obviously) big tax cuts were the beginning of the end. Early 1980s was the beginning of deficit spending and tax cuts based on the Laffer Curve big lie. Bush followed suit, and Obama/Biden realized that the American people would gladly elect presidents who spent borrowed money.

Unclear how we recover as a country given the reach of the Fox News propaganda. Maybe a huge recession?

[phil21]

> recession

This, but an actual depression that will likely make the Great Depression look like a good time - largely due to folks being a lot more self-sustaining back then due to common skillsets and lived experiences.

[greenavocado]

WtfHappenedIn1971.com