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by conception
21 days ago
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I just want to chime in. “Basically nobody” is not nobody. Usually when people speak about these tax rates they are looking at too 1% tax receipts but the ultra wealthy .01% certainly got a payday with Reagan subsequent tax cuts have benefited them tremendously. https://economicsinsider.com/us-wealth-inequality-1965-2025/ has a nice graph. The paydays for the extremely wealthy do not tend to pop up on reports because we do not report down to that level - most top out at too 1% or .1%. But those with the most money and ability to influence our lives with it having been having a //great// few decades. |
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According to the Tax Foundation, the actual average effective tax rate for the top 1% of earners in 1962 was only ~16%. That's because, again, there were massive legal deductions, exemptions and shelters that were permitted to basically ensure that very few people actually paid this rate of tax.
You are correct that the wealthiest of the wealthiest (the top 1% of the top 1%) have seen their fortunes explode in recent years, and there are big issues with this.
But when you're talking about Facebook's despicable behavior and how to deal with it, I don't see how "bring back a marginal tax rate of 90%!" is a viable solution to this problem. The obvious solution is to ensure you have strong consumer protection laws and enforcement and a functioning tort law system.
I do think there is obviously an issue with the influence the wealthy have on regulators and their ability to play the court system, but here's a problem: the wealthiest of the wealthy are still going to be the wealthiest people even after you tax them, and the government's dependence on their wealth for tax revenue can become its own problem.
Taking the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement as an example, you now have state and federal governments that rely heavily on continuing tobacco revenue because the hundreds of billions of dollars of settlement payouts are directly tied to the future sales of cigarettes. Therefore, the state and federal governments want people to keep smoking because if they don't, the tobacco companies wouldn't be able to keep up the settlement payments. It's quite perverse actually, and we should be wary of a similar Big Social Media settlement wherein the government has reason to push for Facebook's continued financial success.