this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025

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submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Originally Posted By u/FuturePowerful At 2025-03-27 10:18:54 AM | Source

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

There were very few people this applied to.

The real reason is the corporate tax rate. It was 52%. Today it’s 21%, and it’s effectively close to zero for many corporations with the tax loopholes used to avoid taxation. Shell corporations, deferring taxes, what have you.

So the US has lost more than 50% of the corporate taxes collected since the ‘50s.

E: the decline in tax % is pretty closely followed by the dramatic rise in CEO compensation.

The wealth being funneled to the top by cutting corporate tax got us the billionaire oligarchs we’re dealing with today.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

We are long overdue for a hard reset. We need a new government with a modern democracy, then the assets of the top 0.1% need to be nationalized. Let them keep enough wealth to still be in the top 10%, but hit them hard and fast. Also, we should do what china does and to end offshoring by forcing companies to sell 20% of their company to the US government if they want access to our markets. Next, we need tax breaks for companies who spend more money compensating their workers than giving money to the parasitic shareholders.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Let them keep enough wealth to still be in the top 10%, but hit them hard and fast.

That's fine for the ones who cooperate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Seeing the numbers laid out, even though I already knew it was bad, is profoundly depressing.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The wealth was also built on the back of exploited Afro Americans. Remember that even Brown happened in the middle of the fifties.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Yes but that was when manufacturing was 33% of the workforce.

Today it’s only 8%. Machinery and robots do the labor and generate extreme wealth in tech and other spaces.

So theoretically you would not REQUIRE the same degrees of exploitation to achieve a middle class similar to that time period.

The win of factory and laborers work is unionization. Tech means decentralized workforce and less likelihood to trust your peers and unionize which was one of the largest wins of the 50s. When you are rubbing elbows with your coworkers - and are geographically living through similar cost of living as your colleagues - you are more likely to strike or require the same or similar types of improvements at the same moments.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

What people in the US are failing to understand is that there are still good manufacturing jobs in the US today. Pharmaceuticals, aerospace, biotech, etc. They’re just on the higher end and require some type of technical or bachelors degree. Although, with the current regime and how they want to run (or not run) education, makes it seem like they want to bring us back to a developing country status where labor standards are low and manufacturing jobs are “low skilled.”

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Yeah totally agree - which should make workers movements that prioritize wins for all American workers the goal. Child care / education systems that work / health care coverage that works - helps the 8% rugged manufacturing as well as like 50% of the active work force. Vs. bringing back high labor work / low skill - which if we pull it off would mean I what? 2-4% expansion of those industries? So…. 12% of the workforce would be prioritized? (as they expand those sectors).

Internal manufacturing to secure specific interests makes sense. (Medical supplies like during COVID or reduction of reliance from certain super powers sure.

But the current admin is at odds with financing sectors or even stimulating or supporting sectors with policy (it’s actively cutting and damaging policy in them) while also slamming tariffs across the very same sectors.

So it makes no sense. But that’s what I figured going into all this. We are reducing class mobility, while reducing health and safety, with every policy and cut. While increasing the debt simultaneously. It’s wild.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Anyone that thinks these fascists running the country want to go back to the 1950s hasn’t been paying attention. They want to go back to 1850s, when women and minorities were second class citizens or not citizens at all and white Anglo Saxon Christian men ran everything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

They want to go back to a past that doesn't exist except in their minds.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ronald Reagon and his trickle-down economics.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Yes, but don't forget that liberals had many many chances to undo the damage Republicans did but they never would. Why? Because liberals are capitalists and capitalist politicians ultimately serve the capital class first and foremost

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

And the 50s were a horrible time for women!!

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And really only included white Christians.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Don't forget it took a democratic US president getting elected four times in a row to set up that tax rate. This tax status took about 30 years to fully reverse.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

Well... except no, it was made possible by a surge in consumption fueled by massive government infrastructure investment and forced savings during WWII. Industry was flush with money from government contracts, people were trained and educated in all kinds of skills, and because so many consumer goods had been either rationed or unavailable due to war production, the average person had lots of savings to spend. Almost nobody (maybe even literally nobody) paid the top income tax rate, because the wealthiest people get the vast majority of their income from capital gains, not salaries.

NOTE: I am NOT saying taxing the rich is a bad idea, I'm saying the 91% top income tax rate was NOT what made 1950s prosperity possible. The trick is not to get all your "knowledge" from memes.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago

But then they'd have to dodge taxes by reinvesting in their company's reputation and their workers. Instead of just cashing out, they'd have to maintain the company reputation as an asset that would pay them forever, as long as the company stayed healthy.

Is that what we really want?

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