For context, by the time 2016 came around the maximum corporate tax rate was down to 35%.
Then in 2017, Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered corporate tax to a flat 21%.
And the 2022 bill Biden just signed guarantees a maximum corporate tax rate of just 28%.
There are many nuances here, lots of additional context, but at the end of the day:
As everyone here knows, we are so clearly living in the second coming of the Malefactors of Great Wealth. And we are not meeting the moment.
It blows my mind that in our relatively recent history we’ve had free market republicans filibustering tax breaks for big business. (Also fyi with anyone unfamiliar the civil rights act and the upcoming election at the time had a lot to do with this.)
But it’s just still so insane to me how many crusty people are alive today and who lived through the 60s yet see a top corporate tax rate about 30% as commensurate with blowing up our economy?! And are voting accordingly??
This is a mess!
And getting off topic here, but what did Teddy Rosevelt do following the Great Depression? Well for one, MF raised individual income tax for the super wealthy to 94%. He also gave creative grants to artists and living history “historians” who got government funding to go do things like recording old people’s personal history for posterity. And today we’re fighting for living wage for service work.
And people that make more than half a million a year pay federal income tax of 35%. And people who make $42k? They pay 22%!
I’m just so tired of feeling gaslighted for wanting the “impossible” when the very same policies existed half a century ago. IT IS POSSIBLE.