Krugman: Why the One Percent Hates Obama - Their tax rates back to pre-Reagan levels

[pampango]

A peculiar aspect of the Obama years has been the disconnect between the rage of Obama’s enemies and the yawns of his sort-of allies. The right denounces financial reform as a vast government takeover — and lobbies fiercely against it — while the left dismisses reform as symbols without substance. The right accuses Obama of being a socialist stealing the money of hard-working billionaires, while the left dismisses him as having done nothing to address inequality.

On all these issues, the truth is that Obama has done far more than he gets credit for — not everything you’d want, to be sure, or even most of what should be done, but enough so that the right has reason to be furious.

The latest case in point: taxes on the one percent. I keep hearing that Obama has done nothing to make the one percent pay more; the Congressional Budget Office does not agree:



According to CBO, the effective tax rate on the one percent — reflecting the end of the Bush tax cuts at the top end, plus additional taxes associated with Obamacare — is now back to pre-Reagan levels. You could argue that we should have raised taxes at the top much more, to lean against the widening of market inequality, and I would agree. But it’s still a much bigger change than I think anyone on the left seems to realize.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/why-the-one-percent-hates-obama/?_r=0

Most of this we knew already. I agree that "we should have raised taxes at the top much more, to lean against the widening of market inequality" but it is still a "much bigger change" than most realize. It's good to see Krugman summarize it like this.

[Andy823]

1. It's called greed

Some people just want more, more, more no matter what. They won't be happy till the government actually "pays them" every year for just being rich.

[Mnemosyne]

2. I think it's basically what they do now. nt

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. A pre-Reagan rate would be 70%

[pampango]

4. I believe Krugman is talking about the average tax rate paid, not the top rate on the last dollar

income. At least that is the title of the graph.

[JHB]

5. Even on the graph, it doesn't look like the effective rates are back to PRE-Reagan

It's higher than some periods in his term, but not the portion before.

Still, it's important to remind ourselves that the top marginal rate and effective rate are two different things. In the 12 years for which George Romney (Mitt's dad) release tax returns -- which were mostly in the period with 90+% top rates, and a few years after it was lowered to 70% -- his effective income tax rate was 37%.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. The way he puts it gives people the idea that Obama has a link to Carter.