65 Years of Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Created Record 'Inequality' Not 'Prosperity,'

[midnight]

A new study by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, which reviewed nearly 65 years of US tax policy and its impact on the overall economy, has found that though cutting the effective tax rate for the nation's wealthiest is a great way to increase undesireable economic inequality, it does not—as Republican rhetoric so frequently claims—do anything to boost employment or fuel economic growth.


Members and supporters of Welfare Rights Committee stand in front of banner at 2010 "tax the rich" protest in Minnesota . (Fight Back! News/Kim DeFranco)
The report, Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945, found that "the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution."

As TalkingPointsMemo's Sahil Kapur reports, the study's findings "are pertinent to a central debate in the presidential election, wherein President Obama is pushing to end the Bush-era tax cuts on high incomes, while his Republican challenger Mitt Romney insists on cutting rates across the board 20 percent below current policy."

"Democrats contrast the tax hikes of the 1990s and ensuing economic growth with the tax cuts of the 2000s and relatively meager gains that followed," writes Kapur, while GOP operatives "argue that the recovery is weak because the economy remains shackled by regulatory and tax burdens."


http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/17-4

[Warpy]

1. They created record poverty if the government would be honest about it

When people who are working full time (and more) need food stamps to feed their kids, something is very, very wrong with the wage and tax structures.

Supply side dogma has failed utterly except for the super wealthy, and it's about to fail them too, as they have to do riskier and riskier things to gain the illusion that their wealth is growing.

They've killed the goose that laid all their golden eggs, the strong working and middle classes who could afford the market basket of goods and services. That is no longer the case, as 30 years of stripmining the economy has impoverished most of us.

[freshwest]

4. +1

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[Warren Stupidity]

3. It hasn't been given enough time. In another 65 years we will start to see

the trickle.