zeebop said: And, either way, what you posted and said does not negate the fact that when businesses taxes, or other costs, go up, it gets passed on to the consumer. Fair or unfair, that's the reality, and that's how it works.
- milfchaser
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As I explained in my earlier post, there was no evidence of this happening during the 1950's, when the U.S. economy worked better for middle class and working class people. Beginning with the Reagan administration the rich have paid lower taxes on higher incomes. One could argue that the greater spending ability of the rich inflated the prices of items purchased by middle class people.
Back in the 1950's, the US was supplying machinery, vehicles, electronics, agricultural products, and everything else under the sun to the rest of the world, at a profit. And it was all built in US factories, or grown or mined in the US. That is the reason the US economy worked better for middle class and working class people.
But not all working class people were well off, as 25% of Americans lived under the poverty line in the 1950's, a statistic that held up until the mid-1960s when the Great Society began to kick in. So the 1950's really weren't a utopia for everyone. Especially for most African Americans and poor whites in rural areas.
Reagan's tax policies didn't screw the workers as much as free trade, offshoring of our manufacturing, replacing a manufacturing economy with the "service economy", outsourcing of labor to foreign countries, and allowing other countries like Japan (and later, China) to dump their products here. And the economic policies that allowed those things to happen were written by Congresses and Administrations of both parties over a 50 to 60 year period. When Japan was allowed to dump their autos and steel on the US market it damaged US auto and steel industries. Reagan might have approved of that, as he was a free trade capitalist, but that shit was happening even before Reagan.
Then you had the decline of labor unions, and deregulation, things which damaged workers' earning capabilities, and which also started before Reagan. The fact the US economy is still somewhat intact is probably a testament to the will of the American people to try to make things work, but our governments, from both parties, have done their share to screw the American people in the process of governing them. If they do the right thing it often feels like it was a mistake that got overlooked.
Its a standard DNC mantra that Democrat presidents always give us prosperity and more jobs. I guess that's why the Rust Belt put Trump in office in 2016, because of all that wonderful prosperity that Obama gave the country. Right now "prosperity" under Biden is groceries costing twice as much as they did when he came to office, and the dollar being worth 17% less than it was worth on January 20th, 2021.
The fact is that Presidents can not make or break an economy, but their party's policies definitely can affect it. What we're living in now is the result of maybe 50to 60 or more years of economic misrule by Congresses and Administrations of both major parties.
The 1950's were a great time to be a white worker in the industrial North and West. Not so great for other people. Taxing the rich more back then didn't do much for the average African American still living under discrimination, or for the poor white who had to live in poverty in Appalachia or the rural areas of the US. Those 90+% tax rates on the rich didn't improve their lives much, if at all. There is only so much you can do with tax rates. Trade policies, labor policies, energy policy, proper use of tax credits, proper regulation of businesses, social safety nets like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare -- those things probably have a more positive effect on the average American than just taxing the rich.