Bernie Sanders said recently that tax rates under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower were as high as 90% for the highest income bracket.
Politifact assessed that claim and shows here that it is true.
What if Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, the Koch brothers, Art Pope, Michael Bloomberg, Paul Tudor Jones, John Arnold, Jonathan Sackler (Mr. OxyContin) and all the other billionaires had their income taxed at Eisenhower rates? We would be able to repair our schools, pay our teachers, hire school nurses, and provide a world-class education. No wonder they prefer to promote school choice. It works for them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It would be nice, but they’d probably renounce their citizenship at those rates. Not a bad idea when you think of it.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/record-number-of-americans-give-up-citizenship-as-tax-laws-bite-2016-02-08
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That highest tax rate didn’t kick in until you had made 20-30X what an average worker made, so it was still low enough that rich people could get and stay rich. But after a certain point, toxic amounts of wealth didn’t get paid to executives because 90% would go away in taxes. Don’t weep for the poor CEO’s; instead of cash, they got “perks” instead (perquisites of office). A company car, use of the company plane, fine art work in their office (plush offices), tickets to ball games, etc., etc. The rich were comfortably rich, they just didn’t have enough money to buy the political system.
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“What if Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, the Koch brothers, Art Pope, Michael Bloomberg, Paul Tudor Jones, John Arnold, Jonathan Sackler (Mr. OxyContin) and all the other billionaires had their income taxed at Eisenhower rates? We would be able to repair our schools, pay our teachers, hire school nurses, and provide a world-class education.”
This might require some math.
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What if all the money they’ve been shoveling out in the interests of destroying public schools, breaking the teachers’ unions, getting rid of their pensions, starting more charter schools, etc, they gave instead to fixing the public schools? That wouldn’t be enough, but it would certainly help.
And yes, tax them more, too.
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A fair number of those people call themselves “new democrats”. The reason I don’t support Hillary Clinton is that she reflects their beliefs and would never fight for anything that didn’t keep their taxes low and their bank accounts absurdly, absurdly high.
One thing about Bernie – he is not wholly owned by the billionaires and isn’t afraid to do anything that doesn’t meet with their approval. Hillary has not shown any independence. And President Obama believes everything they tell him.
Government by and for the oligarchs will never work. Some of them very likely think they are doing what is best for the country. But it is always “what is best for the country without me suffering any inconvenience or not having the billions I need to make sure government does what I want”.
The oligarchs have no idea the dangers they have put this country in. We have already seen the Republican Party decimated by years of their mainstream voters getting poorer and poorer. Soon it will be the Democrats turn, and it won’t be Bernie, who is offering a very reasonable way of governing to alleviate the harshness today’s current economy is causing. It will be a real demagogue. And while the billionaires may be able to buy themselves a plane to another country, in the end, the demise of the great American experiment will be wholly caused by their extreme greed and arrogance.
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In other political news, charter school advocate and disgraced mayor Kevin Johnson introduced Hillary Clinton at her rally at Sacramento City College on Sunday, June 5.
I’m so sad that the NPE and Diane have not been able to push public education to a top campaign issue for either Clinton or Sanders. I’m a fervent Sanders supporter and I believe his anti-corruption stances are a clear fit for a pro public schools agenda. Clinton rakes in cash from wealthy interests via Clinton Foundation donations, PAC donations, bundled campaign contributions, and speaking fees, I do not believe she is the politician who will put a stop to the gutting of our public schools by wealthy interests.
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I agree. KJ is part of the same establishment as the Clintons, so it’s fitting he introduced H. Bernie made a big error in letting H, the AFT/NEA, and the Dem Party throw K-12 under the bus and not allow policy debate this presidential season. He could have demonstrated H’s lifelong commitment to the anti-public billionaires Broad and the Waltons, toxic to the needs of the nation’s kids and teachers.
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Why should statutory rape bother Hillary.Her husband committed real rape. I don’t mean his sex life . I’m talking about the republican neo-liberal economic policy from Trade to banking deregulation that devastated Americas middle class. .
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He’s also married to Michelle Rhee.
Birds of a feather, and all that.
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And while they’re at it, remove the cap on Social Security withholding. That would mean plenty of money for S.S. for a very, very long time.
Unfortunately, they’re not going to do that, any more than they will raise the top marginal tax rate. The 1% don’t want it, and they’re the ones who bribe……pardon me, “fund the political campaigns and PACS of”……the lawmakers.
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Except Bernie, who doesn’t have a PAC nor a David Brock.
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I would venture to guess that there are not that many of the 1% supporting Bernie. 😉
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“The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.” –Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821. ME 15:325
“We are endeavoring… to reduce the government to the practice of a rigorous economy, to avoid burthening the people and arming the magistrate with a patronage of money, which might be used to corrupt and undermine the principles of government.” –Thomas Jefferson to Mr. Pictet, 1803. ME 10:356
You think giving the Central Government (It’s not federal anymore) will reduce it’s appetitive for control and power?
What students want is an education that allows them to pay their debts.
Maybe what the public funds for Higher Education is the problem since apparently it costs so much to provide yet provides no quid pro quo!
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Every other advanced industrialized economy in the Western world provides free or subsidized education for students in public universities, but hey, Thomas Jefferson said some stuff 200 years ago, so they must all be wrong.
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Clinton prides himself on raising the top marginal tax rates a few points yet never mentions a far more significant cut to the Capital gains rate which is where real wealth is created. Today’s Times had a piece on Americans and the Panama papers scam . So the particularly low tax rates that is paid is only paid when the money isn’t sheltered.
A very interesting article in the Times a few months back showed what small increases, nowhere’s near Post WW2 levels could accomplish .
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Jefferson thought it was fine and dandy to own slaves and rape them. He also thought it swell to abandon parental responsibilities.
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That was not supposed to be my reply but there is no edit button so here is my reply
“Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by
the individual.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1784.
“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is
to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the
higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they
rise.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785.
“The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the
whole taxes of the General Government are levied… Our revenues
liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus
applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see
his government supported, his children educated, and the face of
his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich
alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his
earnings.” –Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.
Love that Jefferson guy !!!!!!! He was against an overpowering Federal Government not against Taxation .
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If Eisenhower were alive today, he would be considered a socialist. As I have stated before, if the wealthy were taxed at higher rates on their personal income, we would have a lot more money in the common coffer to educate children, improve social safety nets, and rebuild infrastructure. Instead, we have a group of wealthy, arrogant billionaires that want to redesign our country according to their own agendas. This infusion of tax money under Eisenhower helped to build the middle class as well as roads and bridges.
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Tax increases on the top .1% would yield enough revenue to finance FREE public college tuition for all American undergrads; easy to raise about $55billion for that with moderate not confiscatory raise on the vast wealth of the very top.
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“One constant is the vast amount of money sluicing through the political system in what is certain to be the most expensive election in the nation’s history. Experts estimate that campaign spending, which has risen inexorably in recent years, will easily surpass the $6.28 billion record set in the 2012 federal elections and could conceivably reach $9 billion, much of it for political advertising.
Both parties are busy exploiting the power of barely regulated super PACs to accept unlimited six- and seven-figure donations for candidates. At the same time, campaigns are concealing the names of other rich donors in “dark-money” operations palmed off as tax exempt “social welfare” agencies supposedly dedicated to doing good, not to bare-knuckle politics.”
9 billion. Just to put it in perspective that’s double the cost of RttT.
The vast sums of money changing hands between donors and politicians is one part, but it might be interesting to look at who benefits from this legalized bribery industry.
They’re raising 9 billion but they’re also spending it- on ads, on consultants, on pollsters and advisers and lobbyists. A lot of people are making a lot of money off a corrupt system.
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Yes it’s disturbing how readily the free market facilitates and thrives on, what are essentially, industrial complexes. (In this case the campaign funding industrial complex). They are the economic equivalent of a rogue Jupiter, but instead of a crushing gravity, these systems have massive sums of money that influence, distort and crush any possibility of balance. Our economy is dominated by these economic gas giants and all the little planets, where a quality of life is possible, get sucked up.
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Jonathan,
“. . . the free market facilitates and thrives on. . . ”
This “free market” does what????
The free market doesn’t do a damn thing. The term is a description of economic activities by human beings. The market doesn’t exist except in the minds of homo supposedly sapiens. Google earth free market and you get:
13, 33 14.99 North and 29 29 42.44 West. Pretty hard to get to there from here.
Another misuse and abuse of logic and the English language to say that the “free market” does anything. But it sure serves to deflect attention from the very human economic interactions that serve to destroy the environment and human relations and placing blame on a NON-HUMAN, NON-EXISTENT ENTITY.
Again part of that irreality that so many thrive in.
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Gee Duane,
I get the feeling your trying to tell me something. I wish you would say it more plainly, and with less apparent hostility. I can assure you we are very much on the same page with respect to school reform. Maybe some differences over how we understand some specifics, like for instance, the term free market. I don’t mind debate/ argument but I’m honestly not sure what you’re trying to say.
When I used the term free market, I was responding to Chiara’s insightful (as usual) point about the economy that has grown up around campaign funding and how it has become an industry employing tens of thousands of people. An industry based more on obscuring rather than clarifying. The industry, like the Military Industrial Complex, or The Education Curriculum Industrial Complex, or The High Stakes Testing Industrial Complex, or The Health Insurance Industrial Complex is, as I understand it, market driven. The less regulated the market (more free) the more opportunities for wealth to be concentrated (kinda like the gravity of a really big planet that has an irresistible influence and life of it’s own) at the expense of what’s good for most people.
When Citizens United was put into effect it removed regulations (freed the market) allowing for an unprecedented consolidation of wealth and growing what I would call an industrial complex of sorts.
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A lot of the money is going to TV networks for ad buys.
A few months ago Les Moonves, head of CBS, said Donald Trump is good for business.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464
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Also, too, treat the obscene incomes of the hedge fund managers as regular income, not capital gains, which are taxed at a lower rate.
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Clinton prides himself on raising the top marginal tax rates a few points yet never mentions a far more significant cut to the Capital gains rate which is where real wealth is created. Today’s Times had a piece on Americans and the Panama papers scam . So the particularly low tax rates that is paid is only paid when the money isn’t sheltered.
A very interesting article in the Times a few months back showed what small increases, nowhere’s near Post WW2 levels could accomplish .
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Marginal Rates on income are only half the story. Marginal rates on corporate taxes were much lower. That meant that the best way to keep your money from the tax man was to keep it invested in corporations which provided sources of jobs, r & d, etc., not to mention one would prefer that corporation was here in the US where you could keep an eye on your money. It’s not just about taking from the rich, it’s about investing in the US.
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The people you listed make the vast majority of their money from capital gains, which is now 20%, as opposed to 25% during the Eisenhower era. That kind of increase seems reasonable, even if it would be met with fierce resistance (and even if it is debatable that it would directly lead to more revenue for infrastructure, aid to the poor, school improvements, etc.).
During the Eisenhower years of sky-high marginal Federal income tax rates, the US poverty rate was 22% (1958), compared to 14.8% in 2014 (Census Bureau, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014). In 1957-1958, the US spent $3,681 per public school K-12 student in 2013-2014 dollars; in 2012-2013, the number was $10,763 (NCES). So while what Sanders says about tax rates is undeniably true, it seems disingenuous not to provide the context. These rates were in place at a time when there was far less tax revenue and government spending, not just at the Federal level, but at the state and local levels as well. Low-income and middle-income earners paid a greater percentage of their income in Federal taxes than they do today, where the bottom 60% of earners paid less than 2% of federal income taxes in 2014 (the top 1% paid 45.7%).
One extremely simple and fair way to not only generate a lot of additional tax from wealthy people, but also to take on segregation and educational inequality, would be to reform or even eliminate the mortgage interest deduction. It’s fun to see how quickly painstakingly cultivated blue staters run away from this one. They do virtuous things with those big tax savings, not like those robber barons! http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-26/the-mortgage-interest-deduction-is-bad-for-schools-and-education
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Actually, the mortgage interest deduction is one of those deductions that helps the middle class far more than the 1%. No wonder Tim is willing to eliminate it. The billionaires he admires so much won’t miss it a bit.
Funny how Tim didn’t mention “carried interest” and the special boondoggle awarded to a very special class of .01%. But better than a family earning $150,000 year not be able to deduct the interest on their mortgage than to expect a minimal sacrifice from the very rich people who pay good money to keep their taxes low.
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Bernie wants to tax high speed stock & futures trades at .01cent per transaction. Every day there are hundreds of millions of trades made on Wall St.& in the commodity markets. We could pay off the national debt & fund all of the above.
However, the barons of Wall St act as if this would end the world and we all know they run the world.
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^^oh, I should have read the US News link. I realize why you don’t like the mortgage tax deduction.
It apparently allows wealthier people to afford to buy homes in suburbs where they have good public schools. I forgot you hate any public schools that are good enough to keep the affluent college educated parents whose kids are cheap and easy to teach from wanting spots in charter schools. Bus those kids out of there to underfunded schools instead! Take away their parents mortgage deduction. Undermine that public school so you can open a nice charter school that promises only the “best” kids will get to stay unburdened by having to sit next to those unwanted non-striver students that the charter school is so good at getting rid of.
It’s not really that you don’t like the mortgage interest deduction. You don’t like the good public schools in the suburbs that have succeeded as a result.
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There are numerous reasons the poverty rate is lower today than during the Eisenhower years. Federal poverty programs like the earned income tax credit and child tax credits keep millions of low income earners above the poverty line . Medicare keeps many millions of American seniors out of poverty . So it is not that taxes are lower that poverty is reduced ,as you are implying to discredit the benefit of higher marginal rates. It is that money is now targeted to poverty.
As for school spending, far more students are being educated today with the inclusion of students with disabilities and extreme disabilities and English language learners and in a far more comprehensive manner. Also school funding may be inequitable today,but how much worse was it in the days of “separate but equal” . To just divide the number of students by inflation adjusted dollars spent does not give an accurate picture of the product being measured. In inflation adjustment efforts are made to insure the market basket is the same sample , quality improvements deflate CPI.
So what did Eisenhower, pre Reagan presidents do . They built the interstate highway system . Paid for WW2 and the Korean War . Paid for the Marshall plan to rebuild Europe . Even after Kennedy dropped the top marginal rate to 63% we had a massive Arms race, which included funding the student loan program. Sent a man to the moon. Fought a war with from 250-500 thousand Troops for the better part of a decade and had a very low national debt . A debt that did not go out of wack till Reagan cut taxes.Since the Reagan cuts Government debt has sky rocketed . The graph looks like a moon shot. The lost factor in the equation is the accumulation of debt. We are spending more on borrowed money . Those tax dollars are needed. And as for trickle down . Reagan used massive spending and debt , Clinton/Bush bubbles in finance and housing . We have an economy unable to generate jobs and growth without debt or fictional assets to be borrowed against.
Out of the Thirty five nations in the OECD only Chile and Mexico have a lower ratio of taxation to GDP.
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Tim, let’s not forget that if the IRS & Justice were allowed to do their jobs the US could collect billions of $ from the international money laundering operations in off shore accounts.
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Leona: Only the little people pay taxes.
The Devil: You’re right, Ms. Helmsley
Leona: Will you turn on the air conditioning here? It’s so damn hot.
The Devil: I’m afraid that’s not possible, Madam.
Leona: Then YOU’RE FIRED!
The Devil: No, Ms. Helmsley; you’re ON fire!
Leona: (shreiking blood curdling screams as she disintegrates into nothingness).
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Nowadays one of the big excuses for not to raise tax rates is philanthropy. Interestingly, TED (of TED talks) play a shady role here. From the book “No such thing as free gift” by McGoey:
Proponents of philanthrocapitalism favour a tithing option. Some suggest that they pay more than enough in ‘self-tax’ – willing donations to philanthropy – and that these gestures replace the need to pay any income tax at all. Speaking with the journalist Chrystia Freeland, Foster Fries, a Wyoming fund investor and deep-pocketed Republican supporter, made this point clear:
‘People don’t realize how wealthy people self-tax’, he suggested. ‘You look at Bill Gates, just gave $750 million, I think, to fight AIDS … It’s that top 1 per cent that probably contributes more to making the world a better place than the 99 per cent. I’ve never seen any poor people do what Bill Gates has done. I’ve never seen poor people hire many people’.
Wealthy individuals who disagree with Fries’s views on taxation often find themselves unwelcome at TED events. In 2012, a millionaire entrepreneur and tech investor named Nick Hanauer – he made a windfall as an early Amazon investor – gave a TED presentation that expressed a starkly different view from Fries. His TED talk called for more progressive tax measures. He also lambasted the notion that entrepreneurs are society’s primary ‘wealth creators’. In his words, ‘Anyone who’s ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalist’s course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn’t just inaccurate, it’s disingenuous’.
TED, which operates with the tagline ‘ideas worth spreading’, refused to air the video of his talk online. Asked why, TED curator Chris Anderson said the talk was ‘too political’ to be posted during an election year, and that ‘a lot of business managers and entrepreneurs would feel insulted’ by some of Hanauer’s arguments.
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As we are seeing in this election “The Pitch Forks are Coming ” just not necessarily the way we want to see them.
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