Reagan's Toll on the Middle Class

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:




Reagan's Toll on the Middle Class

— By Josh Harkinson
| Fri Feb. 4, 2011 5:12 AM PST


In the lead-up to what would have been Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday on Sunday, conservatives have been trotting out all manner of panegyrics to their patron saint and his creed of trickle-down economics. For 90 percent of the people in this country, here's what should matter:



Source: Economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez as cited by Politifact


http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/reagans-toll-middle-class

[liberal N proud]

1. Yet so many are blind to this

[SheilaT]

2. And what also infuriates me about this is that

what St. Ronnie was doing to the middle class was blindingly obvious by 1982. During the 1984 elections there were even articles in such left-wing outlets as Time Magazine that noted working class people who were planning to vote for Reagan were even then voting against their own self-interest.

[pampango]

3. Cutting progressive taxes, breaking unions, relaxing coporate regulation took their toll.

In April 1942, just a few months after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt asked Congress to enact a 100 percent top federal income tax rate, in effect a "maximum wage." No individual, FDR told lawmakers, should be taking home, after taxes, over $25,000 - the equivalent of about $335,000 today.

Not until 1964 did that top rate start dipping, down to 70 percent. In 1981, the newly elected President Ronald Reagan would make gutting that 70 percent rate his first major White House priority. By 1986, after two Reagan tax cuts, the top rate on the top income bracket had shrunk to a mere 28 percent.

In the middle decades of the 20th century, the steeply graduated progressive income tax that actor Ronald Reagan so detested operated marvelously well as just that sort of check. America's super rich - our top tenth of 1 percent - saw their share of the nation's income drop precipitously in those years, from nearly 12 percent before the Great Depression to under 3 percent by the 1970s. The top 0.1 percent share in 2007, right before the Great Recession? Over 12 percent. The rich, in other words, have come all the way back - and more.

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=8864

[indepat]

4. All hail the Almighty and the mighty gipper from whom all blessings have flowed

;)