Quote:
Originally Posted by zimmy
The only fair way to look at it is dollar amounts paid compared to gross income. The average is almost exactly the same today then after the Reagan tax cuts of ~1986. Here are the numbers:
"...calculating all taxes paid by Americans and dividing the sum by the nation's total income. To make this calculation, we turned to the Tax Foundation's annual "Tax Freedom Day" report, which offers calculations of total tax burden going back to 1900. (There was no federal income tax then, but there were state and other taxes.)
The foundation's expected tax burden for 2010 is 26.9 percent, up slightly from the 2009 tax burden of 26.6 percent. (This is not unusual: The tax burden typically falls during recessions, as taxpayers move to lower tax brackets.)
Under Eisenhower, that figure ranged from 24.8 percent to 27.7 percent, with the figure lower than 26.9 percent for seven out of eight years. So by this measurement, the tax burden was lower most of the time under Eisenhower.
Under Reagan, it ranged from 29.2 percent to 31.1 percent, meaning that in all eight years it was higher than the current tax burden under Obama."
PolitiFact | Barack Obama says taxes are lower today than under Reagan, Eisenhower
I can understand if someone still believes that lower tax rates would be better for the economy. However, all the arguments about rates and stuff need to be about actual paid. Same reason why it is bogus for the cons to throw around the 39% corporate tax rate as if it is what companies actually pay. |
Obama's statement that "rates" are lower today than under Reagan or Eisenhower are mostly true, but deceptively so, as your linked article notes. And deceptive, as well, in ways that the article doesn't mention. And, in itself, meaningless--Obama doesn't mention that they are not lower than under Bush--begging a so what? His intention, I believe, is to create the "meaning," perception, that he is actually a tax cutter, not a typical tax and spender. That he is fiscally conservative, even more than Eisenhower, or Reagan. The article offers caveats to that perception, one of which you quote. The total tax burden was actually less under Eisenhower than under Obama. So, as you say, if the only fair way to look at it is by total tax burden, then, though rates are lower now, the burden was less under Eisenhower. Also, though rates were much higher (at the top incomes) then, the loopholes were more extravagent, and those rates were not paid, so the comparison of rates is irrelevant. Plus, Reagan began the process of reducing those loopholes, thus was able to lower rates. He began, as Spence likes to say, a vector. He started in office with top rates at 70% and reduced them to 50% and then to 28%. And the current rates that Obama brags about were created by Bush, not him. Though he hasn't yet increased rates, he has, as the article says created or raised some taxes other than income, and some have, conveniently, not kicked in yet, such as the tax penalty for non-insurance. And he wants to raise the "rates" on higher incomes. Unlike Reagan, Obama's vector seems to be trending upward. And is it "fair" when looking at the total burden, that the burden of income taxes, even if the rates are the same, is shifted to fewer payers (nearly half don't pay federal income tax now)?
Whether lower rates would be better for the "economy" or not might be debatable. But if the context of the debate does not include what, ultimately, type of government we wish to have, the big choice that Obama says we are going to make in November, it is all just wonkish tweaking that, if the market is allowed to prevail, and we can survive bad choices, we can recover from if we choose to maintain and re-energize a free market economy directed by minimally encumbered individuals.