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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gregor_us who wrote (4113)	4/11/2004 8:58:20 PM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

One of the side effects of the Great Depression and the Second World War was the powerful impetus given to middle-class dominance in the United States. Marginal tax rates ranged up to 90%, so it became important for CEOs to enjoy prestige and admiration for their good management more than to walk off with the assets of their companies. Also a very powerful stimulus to charitable giving. Over the last 25 years, through misguided interpretations of Hayek, Friedman, and other economists, U.S. government policies have encouraged rapacious greed and selfish (and meaningless) agglomeration of wealth. Partly this has been an understandable reaction against the equally misguided efforts at economic levelling of the 1950s and 1960s that wasted enormous sums on "projects" where no one would want to live and which created a whole generation of welfare dependents. I think what we need is semiconfiscatory taxes on all personal income over $500,000 a year and a negative income tax guaranteeing the poorest people and families an income that they can live on. Maybe a flat 15% federal tax on all incomes from $25,000 to $250,000 and then rates ranging steeply up to 75% (10% additional for every additional $50,000), hitting 75% incremental tax at a level of $550,000.