Economic Thinking at Odds With Historical Reality ☀
Did you know that corporate taxes used to account for roughly 30% of revenue collected by the government - and today that number is only 7%? Probably not, because the corporate media, which would prefer not to pay its taxes and only wants us to focus on just how much Republicans and Democrats can cut out of the budget?” ~Thom Hartmann (via azspot)
The reason that number has gone down is largely due to the fact that the corporate income tax in America is the highest in the world and not to mention we are climbing out of a recession right now. You would think the left, the people that love taxation so much, would figure that more people paying taxes means more tax revenue. How do you get more taxpayers? Lower tax rates.
Endless repetition of simplistic, zero-sum bromides bearing no relation to empirical evidence will just deliver more economic doom.
We are well aware that most corporations pay ZERO income tax.
George W. Bush tax cuts resulted in burgeoning inequality, mushrooming poverty, and the deepest economic crisis since the first Great Republican Depression.
Bill Clinton raised taxes in the 90s and the late 90s were an exceptional brief pocket in the nation’s economic fortunes (as judged by prosperity for those of all ranks on the wealth ladder) over the past ~30 years, since the dawn of the Age of Reagan, where a reversal of Keynesian dominated economic policy into riffs of monetarism transformed the United States from leading creditor nation to top debtor, from largest exporter of finished goods to giant importer status.
Indeed, during the golden age of America, where a ubiquitous “middle class”, on a scale that hitherto never existed, flowered, and a broad majority of Americans enjoyed fruit of prosperity (circa 1930s through 1970s), taxes were at ridiculously high marks. Sensibility, then, was that it was a sound moral mandate for the affluent to pony up for official wars, elective wars, cold wars, “Man on the Moon” programs, etc.…
And as another factual quip here illustrates, the level of government spending runs at approximately 21-22% of GDP. Tax receipts, however, are at historical lows (~18% of GDP), hence, the disparity.
