The Good Ol' Days: When Tax Rates Were 90 Percent

Andrew Syrios
Mises Institute
Nov. 24, 2015

It’s quite interesting indeed when both progressives and conservatives seem to be nostalgic for those good ol’ days in the 1950s, for different reasons, of course. Conservatives want to go back to the nuclear Leave It to Beaver family and what not while liberals like to talk about those 90-percent tax rates that we owe our prosperity to. Or something like that. We’ll focus on the latter for the time being.

Bernie Sanders noted that “When radical, socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, I think the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent.” Paul Krugman said the same thing as did Michael Moore in his film Capitalism: A Love Story and you’ll see this factoid repeated on countless memes floating around the Internet.

However, what a tax rate is and what is actually paid are two very different things. Indeed, in 1955, the only people paying 90 percent (actually 91 percent) were those making over $3,425,766 when adjusted for inflation. And these are marginal rates, so they only paid that on any earnings above that threshold.

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