[lbo-talk] Obama on subprime

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun Feb 3 02:01:40 PST 2008


On Sun, 3 Feb 2008, Patrick Bond wrote:


>> the one thing you have to give Clinton credit for was that he raised
>> taxes on the rich.
>>
> Hang on, hadn't Reagan dropped the top bracket from 70% to 28%, and
> Clinton only raised that bracket to 33% which is where the
> second-highest bracket was? I'm fuzzy and wasn't in the US at the time,
> but I had the impression that this was the extent of it...

I don't think this is right. IIRC, Reagan's 1981 tax cut marginal rates 25% across the board. Clinton's return to 33% returned the top bracket to roughly where it had been, and he then added on an extra bracket for the extra-rich of 39%. Colbert's geese definately squawked.

IIRC, the 70% figure was the peak bracket during the Ike years, and was substantially slashed down over the decades starting by Kennedy in his famous supply side tax cuts.

Of course the devil is always in the voluminous tax code details. And the fact that the ultimato-rich make the bulk of their money in capital gains leads to an embarassing inversion of rates among the most prominent that sometimes obscures how much this stuff sticks the really rich who aren't Buffett or Gates or celebrity CEOs.

But I think it's fair to say within the narrow bounds of what's been considered politically possible for the last 30 years, Clinton raised income taxes on the rich substantially -- and decreased them substantially on the poor with an increased refundable tax credit.

<Add ritual disclaimer, list many awful things Clinton was responsible for that more than offset this/>

<signoff/>

Michael



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