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Pastimes : Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: c.hinton who wrote (2561)	11/7/2008 1:56:36 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3816

tim can you stop making up figure and post some facts? You made the initial assertion that the mega wealthy in the 20s and 30s where wealthier than their counterparts in the 50s, how about you post facts indicating this (and no, you have not done so to this point, you posted an opinion piece that said the wealthy in the 50s where not as much wealthier than the poor, as they wealthy where earlier, you posted a general article about social security under Eisenhower, and a few other things, but none of those is data or argument that supports your assertion.) I was a bit too strong when I say it was all totally irrelevant, as the Krugman link contains a little bit of indirectly relevant data. It's imperfect data because it ignores capital gains, also it isn't about the mega wealthy but the top 10%. So its relevance is minimal, but it shows the top 10% as having about a third of the income in the 50s and 40 to 45% of the income in the 20s and 30s. So we can look to income growth from the 20s and the 30s in the US and see if its enough to make up for the lower share in the later period. Of course the problem is that figures from the 20s are estimates, and even the estimates are hard to find. But it is clear that overall the US was a lot wealthier in say 1955 than 1925 or 1935. Per capita income was much higher in the later period. So an change from the low 40s to the low 30s in income share for the top 10% is very unlikely to mean the top 10% had less in the later period. But that only answers the question for the top 10% (and not with any precision even then), it doesn't really address "the megawealthy" at all. as to SS....it is directly on topic in that to finance those programs taxes had to be raised to heights never seen before or since. If that was the case it would be very indirectly on topic. It wouldn't address the issue actually being discussed. But it isn't the case as SS is paid for by payroll taxes.