andrew j

Taxing the $5 Million-a-Year Brigade

Felix,

Have you considered the historical context for your arguments? Over at five-thirty-eight.com there are some interesting graphs of the top marginal tax rate and the top marginal tax threshold going back to 1913

www.fivethirtyeight.co...

Notice that the top marginal rate used to be as high as 80% for a 5M salary in the 1940s-50s, and that not only was this quite accepted, but many of these captains-of-industry felt downright patriotic about paying it. Can't rightly say that the economic growth was anything like depressed, given that the 40s and 50s were some of the most productive times in the states.

Once upon a time, the idea was that if you so much money that it "starts to lose all meaning," then you wouldn't really mind giving a fair chunk of that back to your country, by god. It was patriotic & culturally accepted as part of a man's duty to society.

Now the "normal" idea is that these individuals owe nothing to the country that sheltered them or made their opportunities possible, and they deserve to keep every cent they earned, as if it were earned in some nationless bubble. See fireballs comment.

A little historical context puts some of these "oh god the Galts will all move!" hysterics in the proper perspective.

(And incidentally, its really a very substantial portion of the gov't income tax revenues come from the highest tax brackets -- changes there can *really* affect the gov't top line.)