Is THIS the Problem ?

Apparently I did. Sorry.

That said, I'm not disagreeing with you that the tax rates were far higher back then.

I'm focused on what taxpayers actually paid in taxes after deductions and write-offs, etc.

The tax rate for a given bracket by itself doesn't show what any given taxpayer actually paid in taxes.

Do you understand that?

Thanks.

At some point .... it gets old trying to argue something so simple and getting so much trivial pushback.

If people can't acknowledge the difference in experience between older generations who had the resources to easily afford three children and a stay at home spouse vs the experience of young adults today .....then I will let it go.

Because I think its a bit more multifaceted than that. You could argue that white men had it better but I'm not so sure women or POC would prefer to go back during those days.

Also, you're a boomer. Houses when you were a kid were almost half the size of today and were fired hazards and asbestos buckets and were horribly inefficient.

You could buy a 900sq 1940s home in west Virginia for 40K with all of the same amenities, shoveling **** down the street for equivalent wages with a family of 4 if that's what you want. But people don't want it. Because their wants are different, and that brings demands. If you need help re creating the life of 1972 with the same healthcare, transportation, crime levels, and living amenities and recreational fun, I may be able to help. But the music, cars and the comics were better.

But I did drive my 1972 formula down to the nursery today while listening to Led Zeppelin II for some winter veggies for the garden and had blast.

I completely acknowledge and agree with your generalization as stated in this post.

Thank you.

That top marginal rates coming down to the benefit of the rich isn’t in dispute.

But that’s different from saying that Boomers as a generation were suddenly eager to defund social programs or abandon public infrastructure. Most Boomers weren’t anywhere near those top brackets to begin with. The high-earner cuts primarily benefited the upper slice of households, not the median worker who was dealing with stagnant wages and rising costs.

What drove the politics of the late ’70s and early ’80s wasn’t some generational decision to stop paying for society—it was frustration that taxes kept increasing at the same time inflation was hammering people’s purchasing power. Voters weren’t sitting around thinking, “We’ve had enough of public goods.” They were thinking, “My paycheck doesn’t go as far and everything costs more.”

So yes, top tax rates fell dramatically. Yes, wealthy households benefited disproportionately. But the idea that Boomers collectively set out to starve public investment doesn’t really fit the economic reality most of them were living, which was way worse than people had seen since WWII. Couple that with the Iranian hostages and the outcome of the election isn’t at all surprising.

Whether they set out to starve public investment or not ..... that's what happened.

When I was a child in the 60's and 70's, my public primary school teachers could afford a home on their salary. We had arts and crafts classes, music classes, dance lessons, swimming lessons, traveling sports teams that competed with other local elementary schools. Regular field trips to parks, museums, zoos and places of environmental interest.

State universities were close to free.

For half a century, the US has done one thing consistently well ..... concentrate wealth into fewer and fewer hands. All during the adulthood of Boomers who have always been the most concentrated voting bloc. Someone is voting for these policies.

Exactly. A modern median home really is 2–3× the size of a 1950s or early-60s home, and that matters a lot. A today-standard home isn’t just bigger—it’s far more complex to build. You’re talking about multiple bathrooms, larger kitchens, HVAC systems, far more wiring, insulation standards that didn’t exist back then, fire safety codes, plumbing codes, energy-efficient windows, modern roofing materials, etc. All of that requires more labor hours per square foot, plus more specialized trades. So in a very literal sense, the modern median home simply takes 2–3× the manpower to produce compared to a mid-century house.

That doesn’t mean people are wrong to want those improvements, nobody wants to go back to 900-sq-ft asbestos boxes with a single bathroom and no heating efficiency. But it does mean comparing the ‘cost of a house then vs now’ is hardly apples to apples.

There's a financial reality of people say in the 60s basically devoting 25% of their work over half their working life of 40 or 50 years for housing and what we see today. Everything else being equal, the total labor hours to produce a modern median home requires 2-3 times the labor to acquire. That's inescapable.

455 SD? Last of an era.

America in 1980 saw double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates and double-digit unemployment. Add to that the Iranian Hostage situation and heightened tensions between the USA and the USSR owing to the Soviets' invading Afghanistan. (America even boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics which was held in Moscow that year.)

Thank you for acknowledging that fact which is inescapably changing the social fabric of our nation.

These changes have been aided and abetted by tax laws in the form of interest and depreciation deductions which promote investor ownership of residential real estate. This has created feudalism in the property markets. Too many young people have no realistic path to the financial stability common in the Boomer generation necessary to raise children. Young men become incels and young women want to move to other countries which have different rules that don't create so many incels.

The sustainability of a nation is based upon the unity of its people. America is clearly imploding.

And the people who enjoy playing feudal lord have purchased almost all US media outlets. If they don't want an independent outlet like TikTok, the politicians do the lord's bidding and force its algorithm to be subsumed into the feudal hegemony.

The American theatrical rituals say "democracy" while the substance is feudalism.

This is where I question your sincerity a bit. Do you think china sees the same ticktock as we do? Do you understand how their algorithm or their ownership works? Here we get a neverending stream of crazy ass conspiracies and ideological alts.

In your world, what is the ideal media setup?

I'll answer that: Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, and the Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Glad I could help. 😀

Saying ‘the U.S. only concentrated wealth’ leaves out the fact that the total number of Americans who are wealthy or upper-middle class is vastly larger than it used to be.

And even if we tried to reduce inequality by taxing high incomes heavily and redistributing--say we took a trillion dollars from the top end and pushed it down to households below the median--we'd lift their incomes.... on paper. But since high-income households don’t spend most of their income on consumption, and lower-income households do, dumping that much money into the consumer economy would mostly show up as inflation.

So sure, we could narrow the gap numerically. But unless we match redistribution with increases in supply ie more housing, more infrastructure, more productive capacity, etc. we're not genuinely improving anyone’s real situation or living standards, just reshuffling entries in the ledger.

I don't understand the basis for any questioning of my sincerity. People may disagree. People may be mistaken or misinterpreted. But questioning sincerity is an imagined journey into the modus operandi of another human being. What possible motivation do you imagine me having for being insincere ?

No ... I don't think the Chinese public sees the same Tiktok as Americans do. I think they are subject to similar centrally managed messaging designed to keep the population orderly and relatively cohesive as we are in America.

I think the ideal media setup is one which is not so obviously corrupt that the citizens hate it. The ideal media is accountable to the public.

In a democracy, we should have the people telling us who they want to be informing us. Instead we let the people choose among only the options that rich people give them.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx

Gallup.com

Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Trend Low

What would you think would be the impact of eliminating tax incentives such as depreciation and interest for wealthy people to purchase residential real estate. To raise property taxes for non owner occupants ?

Those were better days.

I remember as a child during the Vietnam War .... watching correspondents reporting on location. The videos of American soldiers caskets being offloaded en massive from military aircraft as they were returned to the US.

Those were the days when we didn't hide the reality of war from the citizens. Vietnam wasn't popular with Boomers because they were the generation asked to fight and die in it. And they didn't want that. They were a strong enough political force to stage massive anti-government protests against policy.

We don't really have massive protests against government policy anymore. We have huge protests against Trump (and Project 2025's) attempt to eliminate the balance of power in government. We can be anti-king but we seem to have lost the ability to mobilize around which actions we want the government to take. Union energy is almost invisible in the news.

An ideal media would emphasize the aspiration of unions, including the more perfect union the founding fathers aspired for in the Preamble to the US Constitution.

The Preamble

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I think one of the many problems with capitalism is that the media is driven by attention over substance. CNN needs Trump to survive now despite their viewers hating him - it's a thing of beauty because they are digging their own grave out of greed.

I was young when it happened, but it feels like around the time of the O.J. trial the media realized where the real incentives were, and many outlets drifted toward to what fattened the wallet instead of substance.

What happens to a country when "fattening my wallet" becomes a national religion ?

What happens when the obsession with the self which we promote in America completely obscures the fact that sustainability is only achieved through cooperation ?

We have almost zero dynamic and hope giving entities in the US which have the kind of message that FDR offered in 1932. A leader who told us not to fear, that he had everyone's back, and followed through and did the work necessary to demonstrate a commitment to the struggling class.

Bernie was a poor facsimile of FDR. He had the right policy ideas. But he never showed that he had the spine and hunger to gut the world of the malignant indifference in the Dem party establishment. Bernie was more of a complainer than a conqueror. Conquerors do what they must in order to win. Bernie was too caught up in playing fair.

The world is in a very sick place. We need an alpha healer.

I agree with parts of this, but I think you may be seeing FDR through some rose-tinted glasses or some sort of nostalgia. It seems like he's becoming the lefts Reagon of the 80s

Bernie was to the left of him in basically everyway. FDR was super pro Cap. He didn't want to nationalize anything - not even healthcare, which should be nationalized. His taxation looks to be borderline fluff, or maybe just poorly executed because it doesn't appear to have worked very well (although I could be wrong) but he was definitely a strong advocate for the welfare state and labor unions - like Bernie.

You can certainly say we should grade him on a curve considering this was 80 years ago, but I think after the crash, a lot of his stances were pretty much forced in, imo.

I'd certainly want Bernie over FDR both personally and If I just wanted the dude who was the most lefty.

It was a formula 400. I put an LS1/4l60 in it a few years ago, had to switch out the gas tank, drive shaft, motor mounts, power steering and a few other things but it was surprisingly easy and it has a little more power, gets 20+ mpg's and is pretty damn reliable.

It ended up going so smoothly that I pulled another LS1 from a wrecked Trans Am at a junkyard as a backup in case I ever want to do this again in 10–20 years - when engines like that probably won’t be this cheap or even easy to find anymore. Those motors have been definitely shooting up in price lately.

The narrative is that FDR served the working class.

But in reality, he served the wealthy too. He made sure things didn't get so bad that the people were motivated to assemble against the elite.

Trumpism is, at its core, an expression of contempt for the status quo and a deep upwelling of an ancient tribal calling to prepare to fight to the death. The tribal calling is deeply imbedded in our animal nature when we anticipate a struggle for resources.

In such a time, boundary lines are drawn. Greater emphasis is placed upon things like border control ...... but only on the way in. Powerful people look at the resources of foreign territory like Canada and Greenland and Trump lets it be known that his tribe wants to annex that into their sphere of power.

Regardless of what we say we value ..... our actions demonstrate little or no resistance to the raw exercise of their own tribe's power. We don't want a fair world. We want a world in which we feel safe and we don't seem able to feel safe unless we feel dominant.

Frankly, I wish humans would be evolved enough to have conversations about their weird dominance rituals and whether its still necessary to have these boom and bust cycles with massive human suffering. Can we adapt ?

In 1945, the US became the most powerful nation in the history of the planet.

We were on the winning side and had developed the most powerful weapon. US territory was relatively unscathed from the war and the economy was set to explode as a result of global rebuilding and expansion.

The president who led us through the difficulty of the Great Depression and WW2 from 1933-1945 and left a situation which was akin to being born on 3rd base doesn't get credit ?

Do you think Abraham Lincoln was overrated too ?