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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (43379)	5/24/2010 2:22:54 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Not really certainly. Rate of advance of the middle class, is a complex idea. It depends on how you define middle class, whether your considering relative or absolute advances, how you define each, how much you weigh increases in numbers vs. increases in wealth, income, or other measure for those in the group. How you count someone moving up from the middle class to the upper class (is that a small decline in the middle class even though it is a positive thing) or the other way around (which could be an increase in the middle class even though it would be a negative thing). Still even with those complexities I will agree middle class growth was particularly strong in the 50s and 60s. It took place in an environment with much less regulation, with lower effective total tax rates for much of the middle class, or at least the upper half of it, in a period where we had long term rebound growth from the depths of the great depression and the rationing and controls and diversion of resources for the war effort, for WWII, and during a time when societal and legal restrictions on minorities where breaking down along many of them to solidly join the middle class. The higher tax rates didn't help the growth of the middle class, and almost certainly hurt it (although not nearly as much as they could have, had they been directed towards the middle class rather than just the rich).