Re: Tariffs and bikes

On 4/4/2025 9:08 PM, AMuzi wrote:

 Tax revenue as percent of GDP shows no direct relationship to statutory marginal rates or political policy:
 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?locations=US
 Looks to me like it tended to rise during Democrat presidential terms

and fall during Republican presidential terms.

Oh, and about that "94%" rate (which virtually no one ever paid), it ran only in FDR's last full year alive and into 1945, dropped after the war to 91% and continued until Lyndon Johnson, with Democrats running both chambers, dropped it to 77%:

I'm sure "virtually no one ever paid" the high marginal tax rates, largely because people earning that much money invest in tax experts and lawyers to minimize their tax burdens by any legal, and some very questionable tactics.
But I think it's significant that with top tax percentage rates in the 90s, then in the 70s, the country was generally quite prosperous. Middle class prosperity soared. So what was the downside?
True, we had fewer millionaires and no multibillionaires, but as I recall, we got along pretty well without them.
Overall, I think the government should be doing less to help megamillionaires and more to help, say, a couple elderly widows I've met who are both trying to scrape by only on Social Security. Don't worry, Musk and Bezos and Zuckerberg won't go hungry. Honest!
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- Frank Krygowski