Death and Taxes, Then and Now
Try this for perspective on the two great inevitabilities of life: At my birth, life expectancy was 58 years. For a baby today, it’s over 75.
When I started earning in the Eisenhower era, the top tax rate was 84 percent rather than the current 35, and hardly anyone complained.
The only audible grumbles came from cartoon figures in upper-crust men’s clubs and, on one occasion, John Wayne, the celluloid cowboy, whom I told, “If I could get millions for making faces at cameras, I wouldn’t complain about giving most of it back to people who buy tickets to see me do it.”
But that was when patriotism was about loving America rather than hating other Americans, when most of those elected to serve in Washington were working against prejudice rather than stoking it for political gain, when class warfare was being promoted only at the lunatic fringes of Communism and McCarthyism.
John Wayne paid his high taxes and kept making movies that exalted the red, white and blue. (That may come as news to Michele Bachmann, who praised his values in her announcement speech, mistakenly placing him in Waterloo, Iowa, where the serial killer John Wayne Gacy lived.)
How did we get from those days to this fractured, fractious parody of American values being played out in Washington today?
When the President talks about shared sacrifice (i.e., taking back a few percent of the Bush tax cuts from billionaires), how did that get to be a do-or-die issue for the Republican Party?
Why are so many patriots ready to take away actually do-or-die protections of Social Security and Medicare from their fellow citizens with those longer life spans?
MORE.
(John Wayne image from posterlovers.com)
58 Responses to “Death and Taxes, Then and Now”
I support their desire for increased progressivity though it is not really a focus for me. I just think that increase should happen honestly and openly and not through the loopholes and tax breaks. Get rid of it all, create new brackets and make people pay the percent in their bracket. Though this will make both dem and gop supporters and donors howl as if being murdered.
I would include organizations with those donors, and every other interest group.
MSF, Steve, and me, kumbaya.
“I’m happy to walk both of you through the data if you are willing to go through it.” – SteveinCH
Oh sure, just let me flip my crap detector up a notch and close the velcro flap over my wallet first.
I have to agree with MSF. The problem is with the loopholes. What difference does the rate make if people aren’t paying it?
JS,
Too bad I guess. The danger of having to admit you’re wrong I guess is too much for some.
The Magical Sky Father wrote:
Yes — for all income taxes, individual and corporate taxes alike.
Among the advantages not only are that corporate income tax rates could be reduced to around the median within the OECD, but that the alternative minimum tax could be abolished, too.
“JS, Too bad I guess. The danger of having to admit you’re wrong I guess is too much for some.”
No problem there, heck, I’ve been fine admitting when I’ve been wrong. Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen you do it though. I suppose if you start out with the conclusion and then make all your “data” dance around until it fits, then you can believe just about anything.
Which president said this:
“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid. ”
Why, Republican president Eisenhower, in 1954!
How did we get to our current state of affairs, indeed? Why are so many average American citizens so hoodwinked by the Greedy Old Party’s desire to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, much less promote health care for all Americans regardless of ability to pay? Why are we so willing to hate and kill and wage war and tax lower and middle income citizens while those with more money than anyone needs are taxed at a lower rate?
The mean-spiritedness of our current political machine is very, very disturbing to me. There seems to be a widespread hatred toward middle-class Americans, as if we are somehow undeserving grunts to be worked at half-wages and left without pensions, homes, or medical care so the wealthy can…what? Hang on to a few hundred thousand that they wouldn’t miss?
This is what I call “evil.”