I think it's good to keep a perspective on U.S. Income Taxes to understand the source of some of the current tax policy and rhetoric. Up until 1963, the highest individual marginal income tax rate was 91%, meaning that for income in excess of $200k U.S. annual income ($or $400k for married couples) any income in excess of $200k was taxed at a rate of 91%. Mind you, this is normal income, not capital gains, etc... This max rate was cut to 70% in 1965, where it remained until the Reagan cuts in 1982. The top income rate has wavered between 30 and 40% since, but look at the rates Reagan was trying to lower versus those today. It's become a standard plank in the Republican Party's platform to reduce taxes, because reducing taxes is always "good."
The truth is that the source of Reagan's proposed tax cuts is an Arab economist, Ibn Khaldun, who published his theory in 1377, offering that if tax revenues will tend to go to zero with rates equal to either 0 or 100%, then there will exist a rate in the middle that gives a maximum overall revenue. Taxation rates either above or below this maximum would give less than the maximum total revenue. Reagan's view was that a maximum rate of 70% must be in excess of that point of maximum revenue, so lowering it ought to give more tax revenue. As the max rate has been continuing to drop via subsequent cuts, it seems ludicrous to continue to claim this benefit, especially now that we can look back in retrospect at the result of these cuts and see that they haven't brought the desired result.
Second, it seems to me that the electoral process here in the U.S. has drifted away from generally selecting candidates with overall popular appeal to selecting candidates with strong idealogical ties to the right or left, depending upon which party they belong to. In 2012, Mitt Romney, a very centrist Republican, had to practically lean over backwards to his right to keep the nomination from falling to one of his far more conservative rivals. In a similar fashion, Hillary Clinton, in 2016, had to adopt policies far to the left of her record, which was arguably closer to Reagan's than to Kennedy's, in order to wrest the nomination from Bernie Sanders, who was positioned on the far, far left of the Democratic Party.
Hard to say what all contributed to this extreme polarization, although the demise of network media in TV, newspapers, magazines, etc... in favor of more biased new sources with more deliberate leanings is at least helping to maintain this gap of information between sides. One proposed solution is the opening of primaries, requiring candidates to appeal to broader populations across party lines, which might tend to encourage more centrists, like Gerald Ford. Just a thought.
Erin
