Cloward-Pivens
Well, you can find some wackos anywhere, but I would not consider this philosphy any type of a movement nor a party goal.
Gary, perhaps in your zeal you don't realize, that I feel your in some cases putting words in my (and others) mouth or implying that I must support a particular position, then you attack that position.
I think you are correct Dave, though I think there may be a predisposition to assume what position I am taking as well. As I have said, there are some areas I think along liberal lines, but there are others that I look at in a very conservative nature, sometimes perhaps putting me to the right of the tea party
For example I do not believe if you were born of illegal immigrants or even no citizens that you should be considered a US citizen just because you were born in the US. At least one of your parents must be a US citizen IMO. That loose way of acquiring citizenship was valuable when we needed manpower and our economy was rapidly expanding. The time for that need is gone.
It should be pointed out that nobody pays the marginal rate.
There are ways of avoiding it, but some indeed will pay that top rate.
The real rate paid is much lower because of deductions and loop holes.
There were loopholes, but their still are, the constant is a much higher top end fed tax rate.
The capital gains tax was real low and the tax on interest income was actually 0% in practice. The real % income tax paid by very top income earners was only around 33% on average.
Interesting. I'd like to run some numbers and see what I come up with. I would think that the tax burden though was born more by the upper end than it is now. While there are loopholes, deductions, and differences such as in capital gains, I can't see those making up for the higher Fed rate. As I said, we still have loopholes now, so we don't pay on our true income but the adjusted income after the deductions and loopholes.
What he essentially did was left the top marginal rate high so a wealthy income earner would have to pay it if they did not re-invest their earnings in the private sector. (
Not a bad idea, wish we would use it today. I read a study on how much money makes it back into the economy, looking at average wage earners, wealthy, the government, etc. It was evaluated in many ways, but the least cost effective method was money left in the hands of the wealthy, as it is more stagnant and does not get back into the economy. This top bracket of 90% really would motivate those top earners not to leave their money stagnant.