This chart shows how Reagan destroyed the economy = reverse Robin Hood

[Coyotl]

by robbing the poor and giving to the rich.

The Telltale Chart
http://telltalechart.org/2012/07/the-willie-sutton-guide-to-taxes-marginal-rates-1913-2012/

This graph traces the marginal tax rate for five income thresholds. The background bars show the share of federal revenues derived from the individual income tax. The pre-1942 income tax relied heavily on high earners (rates on those earning less than $50,000 never rose above 8 percent). The Revenue Act of 1942 broadened the base, introduced tax-withholding from paychecks, and raised rates across the board–transforming the income tax (in order to pay for World War II) into a major source of federal revenue. For most of the postwar era, the marginal rate on high earners was in the 70-90 percent range–dropping to less than half that in the 1980s and now sitting at 35 percent.

Follow link for complete chart with legends.

[dkf]

1. You mean they funded a social security trust fund.

If not for that trust fund we would be raising the payroll tax or cutting benefits today.

But yes the extra funds into social security made personal saving much more difficult.

[Coyotl]

2. Taxes on the rich went from 70% to less than half of that!

That's what I'm talking about, erstwhile income taxes as a percent of federal revenue remained about the same. That shifted the tax burden to the poorer segments of the population.

[Scuba]

3. What part of that 90% Marginal Rate was for Social Security?

Or are you just trying to muddy the waters?

[Ikonoklast]

4. Then why did personal savings rise dring that time frame?

You are so transparent.

[dkf]

5. Here...

ROBERT REICH: Only that a lot of Americans in the 1980s began paying more in payroll taxes, in Social Security taxes as a result of a very important reform that Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan put through, but those increases in payroll taxes have actually for most Americans more than compensated for, more than took away any tax reduction they had in income taxes, and that legacy lives on to this day.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june04/reagan_06-10.html

[dkf]

6. From Joan Walsh...

Despite his reputation as a tax slasher, Reagan raised taxes three times, and tripled the deficit during his eight years in office. Sadly, his working-class “Reagan Democrat” admirers don’t seem to remember that one of his tax hikes raised payroll taxes, which hurt poor and middle-class Americans and shielded the wealthy. The main reason he’s remembered as a tax-cutter is because of what he did to tax rates for the uber-rich: He slashed the top rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, and income inequality has soared ever since, so that today, the top 1 percent of Americans controls a quarter of the nation’s wealth, as opposed to 8 percent when Reagan became president.

If that 70 percent rate sounds a little high, it’s useful to remember that the top rate was 94 percent at the end of World War II, and after a brief drop to 82 percent, it stayed in the 90s under Republican Dwight Eisenhower; it was Democrat John F. Kennedy who slashed it to 70 percent. (It’s actually worth reading this whole article.) The über-rich — the top tenth of 1 percent — saw their share of income drop from nearly 12 percent before the Great Depression, to under 3 percent by the 1970s. Those are the tax rates that powered the postwar boom — the expansion of public education and universities, highway construction and home-ownership, government-funded research and development — that we think of as the American dream.

So let’s be clear: Reagan began a destructive spiral of concentrating wealth in the hands of fewer people, and deregulating business, that culminated in the economic crash we’re still digging out of today. He even heralded it, by signing the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institution Act, which waved the “Go” flag on the savings and loan scandal, and foreshadowed the repeal of Glass-Steagall a decade later. To review: Under Reagan, income inequality began to grow, household savings dwindled, household debt correspondingly began to rise, and the clout of the financial industry exploded. [\B]The top 0.1 percent of Americans saw their share of income climb higher than it was before the Great Depression. And here we are.


http://www.salon.com/2011/02/04/reagan_war_on_poverty/