This Federal Bailout Proposal is a Disaster | 21 comments (21 topical, 0 hidden)
Reagonomics 101 (none / 1)
Cenk, you do know that if Reagan had not repealed the upper tax bracket, none of these MF's would a have good enough reason to steal that much money and we would not be in our current world of shit. The looting of banks, pension funds and corporations began with the repeal of the upper tax bracket in the 1980's. The capital gaines tax cuts in the 90's and early 2000's just made it more profitable.

by sisco66 on 09/19/2008 07:54:12 PM EST

Thanks, that is a good point. (none / 0)

People always forget that there might be reasons behind laws that are not immediately obvious.

Nobody actually paid 70% when there was a 70% tax bracket.

People who earned that much were forced to either keep their money in their company, keep reinvesting their investments, or keep their money in tax-free investments.  There were no multi-million dollar golden parachutes because no shareholders wanted 70% of their golden parachute cash to go toward paying income taxes.

Now that the top tax bracket is so low, we have to encourage people to keep their money invested by giving them a ridiculously low capital gains tax.

by rbruck on 09/19/2008 09:26:34 PM EST

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Top Marginal Tax Rate (none / 0)
Right, the other point is that the top marginal tax rate doesn't kick until you've reached a certain amount of money.

Meaning that if you make 10 zillion dollars a year you would NOT be taxed at the 70% rate on every single dollar. You'd be taxed on a lower rate until you passed a certain threshold, and then *every dollar after that* would be taxed at the 70% rate.

It's like saying "look, you've made it, you've got MORE than enough money to live very, very well. So every dollar you make after this is just icing on the cake. And you're cake will still be more than fucking delicious if you only get 30% of the icing, trust us".

Or something like that.

by Tom Hanc on 09/20/2008 10:07:14 AM EST

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R&D vs Capitol Gains Cut (none / 0)
What is investment? Is it buying stock in  a company hoping that 10 years from now it will turn into Apple or Google having exponential growth and return on investment. Or are we investing for the dividend? The problem is that the low capitol gains rates on both encourages the BOD, who are often major stock holders, to be short sided increasing dividends rather than investing in R&D and the type of growth that creates jobs. Not to mention accounting “innovations” and stock buy backs. We only have to look at the exploding deficit and exodus of jobs to realize that entire supply side theory is a myth. The combined market free for all is what led to pressure for more deregulation, the tech bubble and the now housing bubble, as well as raiding of pension funds ect.
If we want to really fix the problems we need to start to undue the mistakes that got us here

by sisco66 on 09/21/2008 08:09:18 AM EST

[ Parent ]

This Federal Bailout Proposal is a Disaster | 21 comments (21 topical, 0 hidden)