CEO Pay Soars, Average Worker Pay Stagnates
91% marginal tax rate sounds almost unreasonably high. I can see why the rich would complain about that. When recently studying Supply-Side economics, it helped me come to the realisation that if there is no limit to government taxation, then there is no real incentive to be productive. I do not know all things economic, but it sounds like tax rates that high would hurt the middle class more than help, because people and companies with large amount of revenues would simply leave rather than work in the United States and continue to give 91% of their taxable income to the government. I do believe that we should enact policies that would keep us at a sustainable and steady rate of growth, but neither of the extremes that were talked about sounded like they would work. Yes i believe that there should be higher income taxes for those making more money because most likely they are putting to use the infrastructure in the country more than the people who do not. This especially means CEO’s who ultimately get people into a company to run it. For example, huge food chains often have many, many trucks on our highways around the clock. This can only happen because our tax money has paid a great deal to maintain the roads, which in turn get used and ruined by these absurdly large vehicles. If companies have the extra cash to pay CEO’s millions, then we shouldn’t have to watch buildings deteriorate or watch potholes form and stay there because there isn’t enough money to pay for them. They should have to have a high enough tax to recover without a doubt all of the damage that occurs through depreciation to public infrastructure.
Eli Zumberg and 
Michael DeLaGarza are discussing.
Eli Zumberg 5:08 pm on May 7, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply
the other thing we need to fix would be the way that rich people are capable of hiding their money in foreign offshoots, as well as the laughable capital gains tax because that is a significant problem that could help to fix our problems without raising the income tax back to 91%.
Michael DeLaGarza 7:21 pm on May 7, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I agree and in a perfect world that would be fantastic. The only problem is that in order to keep our economy growing steadily above the rest, we need to attract foreign investment just as much as the next country does. Simply residing within the United States contributes to our economic growth, so playing hard ball with them isn’t always the best choice. If every country made it so that once you made money in their country, you had to keep it in their country, well the world wouldn’t work the same way. What will keep the U.S. viable as a strong center for economic growth is constantly being a place that business men want to do business. Our freedom in part allows for this, so taking that away may take us farther away from the higher tax revenues we are looking to gain.
Eli Zumberg 6:09 am on May 8, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I’m not saying to play hardball with foreign investors, I’m talking about the kinds of people who hide their money in places like the Caiman Islands or companies that open up dinky HQ’s in Ireland to avoid paying taxes here.