Reply #14: The tax rate used to be ABOVE 70% not long ago

[Atman]

and yet what so many fail to realize, or at least for some reason fail to want to bring up is that the big wealthy names in our society -- the Carnegies, the Kennedy, the BIG names in old-time American wealth and power. All of these guys somehow managed to survive the horrible burdens of immense wealth, and came out of it quite nicely, thank you very much.

And they'll do it again, this time. They'll survive quite nicely under the horribly unfair burden of 35%, 38%, or national sales tax.None of these tax rates even touches them. No one is pointing the absurdly obvious point, that when you have tons and tons of money, the kind of money these guys have, it builds upon itself so fast that all they have to do hand it over to another guy (who is probably also doing quite well off this whole deal), and he makes sure the bills are paid the investments are performing.

35%? 38%? Everything we have in this country, the modern look and feel of it we've all grown up with and have long since take for granted, was built during times of what are supposedly "crushing" tax burdens. From Hyannis Port to Carnegie Hall, huge institutions of personal and quasi-public wealth. That was including the "death tax," the tax on large estates which affected all but the smallest percentage of our population, so small that the constituency of Skittles eaters would hold more far political power in a truly representative democracy. But for that wealth thing.

Dammit, the people writing these damn laws, telling us they're being crushed by the taxes, are the same people benefitting from the lower rates. We all know that, it is a practically a cliche of civics. And like that other time-worn cliche, that "third rail," most discussions of higher tax rates on those with the most wealth to spread around are ultimately discussions of a politician's swan song.

I'm not attempting to create the new tax code. I'm not pretending I'd even know where to begin. I'm not advocating a return for 70%-plus tax rates. I am just viewing this thing from a what I see before my own eyes perpective. I am merely trying to point out how ridiculous it is to assume that we can continue to keep building this society, keep advancing, if the people with the money actually don't put some of it back on the table in some sort of mutually beneficial proportionality, similar to the way it was when this country actually accomplished things, apparently in spite of its wealth.

I wish they'd quite bitching about their fucking tax "burden."