The Effect of Individual Income Tax Rates on the Economy, Part 3: WW2 and the Immediate Post-War Recovery
by Mike Kimel
This post is the third in a series that looks at the relationship between real economic growth and the top individual marginal tax rate. The first looked at the period from 1901 to 1928, the second from 1929 to 1940. This one will look at the period from 1940 to 1950.
Before I begin, a quick recap… both the 1901 – 1928 period and the 1929 – 1940 [link fixed] failed to show the textbook relationship between taxes and growth. In fact, it seems that for both those periods, there was at least a bit of support for the notion that growth was faster in periods of rising tax rates than in periods when tax rates were coming down. There were also a few other findings that might be surprising – the so-called Roaring 20s were a period in which the economy was often in recession. The New Deal era, on the other hand, coincided with some of the fastest economic growth rates this country has seen since reliable data has been kept. As we will see in this post, the period from 1940 to 1950, encompassing WW2 as well as the immediate post-war recovery, also is subject to a lot of popular misconceptions.
Real GDP figures used in this post come from Bureau of Economic Analysis. Top individual marginal tax rate figures used in this post come from the IRS. As in previous posts, I’m using growth rate from one year to the next (e.g., the 1980 figure shows growth from 1980 to 1981) to avoid “what leads what” questions. If there is a causal relationship between the tax rate and the growth rate, the growth rate from 1980 to 1981 cannot be causing the 1980 tax rate.
The following graph shows the growth rate in real GDP from one year to the next (black line) and the top marginal tax rate (gray bars) for the period from 1940 to 1950.
Finally, in the fourth decade we looked at in this series so far, we see a graph that doesn’t contradict textbook economics: growth seems to slow down as tax rates rise, reaching its lowest point (on the graph) when tax rates peaked. Then, after tax rates begin to fall, growth picks up again. So why do we see this negative correlation between tax rates and subsequent growth rates during the 1940 to 1950 period when we saw the opposite in the previous periods?
Well, as I’ve pointed out many times in the past, there is a quadratic relationship between tax rates and subsequent growth rates (kind of like the Laffer curve, but with real GDP growth taking the place of tax collections), and the fastest growth tends to occur when the top marginal rate is somewhere around 65%. (At this juncture I have to point out things can be true whether we like them or not. If you’re looking for a micro-foundations reason why raising tax rates can create faster economic growth, try this.)
In any case, tax rates in 1940 were at 79%, and they reached a high of 94% in 1944 and 1945. Clearly, at 79% the top marginal tax rates were already above optimum, and raising them simply moved them even farther away from the optimum growth rate. Conversely, cutting tax rates down to the low 80% following the end of WW2 moved tax rates closer to optimum.
But growth does not live by tax rates alone and the graph above hints at a few other misconceptions. Let’s start with a big one shared by folks on the left and the right, namely that World War 2 led to faster economic growth. In fact, many folks go so far as to say the economy suffered very slow growth until the outbreak of WW2, which as we saw in the last post in the series, is a comical claim. The graph below shows growth rates from 1938 to 1944. (Remember – for our purposes, growth is from t to t+1… thus, growth in 1938 is the percentage change between the 1938 real GDP and the 1939 real GDP.) As with Figure 2 in the previous post, the best ever year of the Reagan administration is also included for comparison purposes.
Notice… growth was already fairly quick from 1938 to 1939, and from 1939 to 1940… and then it really jumped from 1940 to 1941. Pearl Harbor was December 7, 1941, so most of that latter jump came before the American entry into the war. Now, one might say that somewhere around 1938 was the beginning of US involvement in WW2, what with Liberty Ships and the Arsenal of Democracy and all. Put another way, that big jump in growth came before the US was in the war, but as an administration whose policies had already generated several years of very rapid growth since 1933 took an increasing role in the economy. Apparently the economic policies followed were good enough to overcome even tax rates that were significantly above optimum.
Growth peaked between 1941 and 1942 and then began to shrink. In part, as we saw, that was because tax rates got too far above optimum. In part, on the other hand, it is because too much of the country’s labor pool was shipped abroad to fight in the war. But regardless… if the war had been a catalyst for jumpstarting the economy, the peak would not have occurred when it did… and growth would not have started accelerating so many years before the country’s entry into the war..
There’s one more myth that is worth tackling. That myth is that there was some sort of stupendous economic boom following WW2. And it only makes sense that there would be such a boom – the GIs came home, tax rates were cut in 1946 and again in 1948, government spending dropped, and rationing and price controls went by the wayside. And as Figure 1 shows, real GDP had a post-war nadir (I always wanted to use that word!!!) in 1947, and recovered after that. But it is important to put that recovery into context.
The graph below shows the rate of growth from 1947 (the bottom) to 1950 – the post-war miracle, as it were – and it compares it to the rate of growth from 1933 (the bottom of the Great Depression) to 1936, the heart of the New Deal.
As Figure 3 shows, there really is no comparison between the two recoveries. Whereas during the post war recovery, the economy grew almost 13% over three years following the bottom, it grew almost three times faster following the bottom in 1933. And from the previous post, we saw what happened during the rest of the 1930s. We’ll see what followed the post-War recovery in the next post on this series.
As always, if you want my spreadsheets, drop me a line. I’m at my first name which is mike and a period and my last name which is kimel at gmail period com.
Why don”t we try to get the common man involved in this debate? After all, he is the one to suffer. I respect you and love your blog, but we have to admit that the conversation is limited unless we hear from the people who will take the brunt of the pain from decisions of the successful idiosy.
Matt K,
I share your sentiment. Here at Angry Bear, the writers make their best effort to take complicated issues and simplify them as much as possible. In my case, I started writing on the effect of taxation on growth because I heard so much nonsense about the topic from people claiming that if only cut taxes we’d have monster growth. And in almost every post, I try to write in a way that is accessible as I can make and still get the facts across. I don’t know what else we can do.
Seems obvious to me that, in order to maintain net income, higher taxes would necessitate more economic activity (work) or more aggressive economic activity. All this efficient man/actor nonsense is wrong-headed. It is not the rate of return alone, but the fact of some more return that matters.
Have you ever heard anyone say “I’m going to quit my job because my taxes are too high.” Or
“not going to invest because taxes take too much of the income I would not earn unless I invest.”
walt,
Note the link in the post (at the words “try this”) as to a reason why higher taxes might lead to faster economic growth. That said, even that effect has to have an upper bound… and clearly taxes in the 90% range are too high.
walt
as a relatively common man i can say all this economic man analysis doesn’t seem to have much to do with the way i make decision. i would guess it might be a more accurate picture of the way a businessman makes decisions AS a businessman, when he can.
But I agree with you, it doesn’t seem reasonable to me that a businessman is going to go out of business merely because his taxes go up. Unless they went up to a point where he was making less than he could in some other activity, or if being in business resulted in a net loss in income.. not less than what he was making before, but making less than zero.
might be complications. if he has enough saved and would really rather go fishing, then, maybe high taxes would lead to less “growth.” on the other hand, if he has enough, maybe “growth” would be better served by his stepping aside and letting some hungrier person take over. or maybe, going fishing is the highest and best use of his time, and “growth” after a point is a deal with the devil.
all of which leads me to suspect that those higher taxes lead to growth because the government is spending, investing, the money more effectively than the private sector. a conclusion which would not seem odd to any honest person who has looked at what private investors have been investing in over the last, say, twelve years.
Just a quick word here about “higher taxes” and what that means.
Many who hate them and some who don’t, seem to have a mental image of taxes as a percentage of income scooped up and simply lost — carried off to build a bonfire somewhere. In some cases this may be true, but generally taxes end up doing something. In good government it is used to build things and help people. In bad government it is used to destroy things and oppress people, or taken as booty. In neither case is it lost.
This looks ludicrously obvious, but when I read the rhetoric this is what I hear.
I am inclined to think that our taxes could be cut deeply, if there was some way to strip out the portion going to destruction and economic and political buddies. but that doesn’t seem to be the way the debt hawks would cut the pie.
Noni
Mike,
I think this graph is appropriate here (again). Basically the three years 33-36 were filling the huge hole from depression. 47-50 was just getting us back on the baseline (and was a relatively flat growth period compared to 50-53) that had been pretty steady (and has since then). I do not see any economic or monetary policy the US Government could take to get the “fill in the hole’ growth of the mid thirties. The huge pent-up demand is not there.
From an economic perspective the depression was a black swan event….
Islam will change
Buff
maybe a dirty swan.
i think Mike has shown that the “higher taxes = more growth” relation holds across time.
i would not expect it to always hold. as Noni points out, there are bad governments that tax a lot and spend the money… like rich people.
I would suggest that it’s not so much the tax rates as the level of income that is at work here. at some level, “too much income” leads to waste, not growth.
i think that “the rich” are too rich. i also think the “i’m not rich” are too rich. but i would not “tax the rich” to fix that. though i might tax the rich if i couldn’t think of any other way to put some money to work doing the things that need to be done that rich people can’t or won’t do.
Buff,
Yes, but…. and the but is the problem here. Ys, 33 to 36 was digging out of a hole. And yes, the hole was deeper than the 47 hole. But as I pointed out, after 1936, barring one sharp recession, the economy continued to rocket and growth accelerated. A big hole doesn’t necesarilly get filled by rapid growth (see 2007-2009 hole), nor does it lead to rapid growth once the hole is filled. I posit the difference is policy.
Mike,
Once the hole got filled, we leveled off at historic growth patterns. That’s my point. FDR’s policies did not make any lasting change on the growth patterns. They did not change the slope of the line past the point the hole was filled. (BTW no other Pres has done so either). A change of policies from Obama’s obviously failed ones (which are just digging the hole deeper) at best will get us some rapid growth, but then back to the historical trend line. Basically we have ‘noisy’ data that has ups and downs above the trend line. But no one has managed to actually change the long term growth line.
The backlash against Obama/Dems big government controlled/heavily regulated, high tax environment is just in its infancy. It will get stronger as Obama’s policies continue to hold us below the line. What I worry about is that Obama’s policies may actually flatten out the growth curve in a long term manner by institutionalizing central government control (either de facto or de jure) of large segments of the economy.
You see exactly the same in the housing bust. We are still sinking towards that historic price line even years after the ‘pop’. All the efforst by government to stop the sink has at best only delayed and drawn out the drop back to ‘normal.’ But we will get there.
And yes policies matter – but only in the short term. And from all the data you’ve posted over the years I would say they only effect things at the margins. So far, Bush’s response to the Clinton’s dot-com crash and 9/11 or Reagan’s response from taking over during Carter’s recession was far more successful than the current Dem President. I’ll take 2001-2004 or 1981-1984 over the last 3 years under Obama any day. Leadership matters – and that’s one area Obama seems to be lacking.
No set of policies are suddenly going to bring us back to FDR’s growth rate. Just not going to happen. And increasing government regualtions, making government more intrusive and omnipresent, and a anti-business stance won’t get you there either – it will actually hurt you. You can only go so far on other people’s money – even when your borrowing it by the trillions..
Islam will change
Mike,
I don’t think I’ve ever questioned your numbers. I doubt I ever will. We just differ on interpretation.
We had ‘filled in the hole’ by roughly the late 1940’s and had leveled off post war back to the normal. Other than war spending I don’t remember Truman or Ike for that matter, making any wholesale changes in FDR’s new deal. All the social programs you mentioned were still in place, the country was booming and yet we were right back were we were in the 20s. Lot’s of new technology coming on line, the space race and its spin offs about to start and the information age in the distant future.
Building those social programs really boosted GDP growth, help pull us out of the depression, and from the looks of it damped down some of the busness cycle extreames. But what FDR did not do was change the long term historic growth pattern. He filled the hole. So did Hitler. I much prefer FDRs method. But FDR did not change the trend.
JFK & LBJ also added a host of social programs that temporarily boosted GDP (along with Vietnam War – like WWII for FDR) but did not change the long-term trajectory. Again the host, the robust US capitalist economy, could handle some more dead-wieght loss and compensated and went on. Right back to the historic norms, but without the meteoric rise that FDR had since their was little/no whole to fill up. But like the housing bubble we went right back to the trend line.
And now we are here in 2011. Huge government debt, huge private debt, bi-partisan low-level wars, and a government bigger and more intrusive than FDRs worst nightmere. You keep saying we need more social spending. On what? Seriously on what? What huge social programs, paid for by high taxes and then redistributed to your Social Program of choice, do you beleive can be set up that would suddenly generated the FDR GDP growth (which was not sustained even though the programs remain)?
The US has a few constraints on it that FDR did not:
1) FDR was able to round up millions of able-bodied men and ship them off through the WPA (and other type programs) and build public works projects for min wage (No Davis-Bacon crap). the Florida Keys railway for example, were the workers & families lived in tents year round. The US government can’t do that now and no one would work that way – see how many unemployed will go work the fields in California. – they would ratehr stay on the dole.
2) Environmental and other regulations that almost kill projects before they even start. That’s what made Obama’s “shovel-ready” claim a joke. The Hoover damn could never have been built in todays legal environment.
3) 15-17 million illegal immagrants. FDR rounded them up and shipped them back in his day and they were no were near as numerous. Obama has hit historic highs in deportations but its a drop in the bucket.
4) Bloated and inefficient government at almost every level. To the point were the Education department has a SWAT team, the EPA is going to shut down powerplants with the possibility of causing brownouts, and HUD regulating how magicians handle their bunnies. Its out of control.
5) The US Federal Budget is also out of control. Forget SS. We borrowed 40% of the Feds operating funds last year. We are not fighting Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany anymore. Obama’s plan is to keep on doing that, or more, for the next 9 years. What can’t go on will eventually stop….
Which comes down to the choice we face. The Dems want larger, more intrusive, government. One that restricts your personal and economic freedom. One were what you can say, your medical care, who and where you live and what you can eat are all regulated by the […]
Coberly,
“Mike has shown that the “higher taxes = more growth” relation holds across time.”
He has never remotely come close to proving that conclusion. That is his interpretation only!
Darren,
You are correct. Coberly overreaches. Heck the first graph in Mike’s post actually would lead you to the opposite conclusion.
What Mike has shown is somewhat of a correlation between times with higher tax rates and times with higher GDP growth. What he has not shown (and I’m pretty convinced is impossible to show with the current state of economics) is any under-lieing causation.
Bottom line: Raising the top tax rates to 55% will not suddenly bring about 17% GDP growth.
For example, I can show an overwelming correlation between US Military deaths and Democratic Presidents for the last 100 years. If all you cared about was deaths due to warfare you would never vote Democrate ever, since Democrats have caused (by an order of magnitude) more war related deaths than Republican Presidents. The correlation is much stronger than the tax/GDP one. Obama by consolidating the US victory in Iraq, surging in Afghanistan, and opening up on Libya was just following in a long-establish Democrat President precedant. Note sure why anyone was surprised??
So always vote R if you wish to support the troops (in a long life).
See how easy that is.
Islam will change
Gee, i dunno Buff
If you wanna go for it, what was the military death rate per capita during the first Republican administration?
As for filling in the hole vs long term trends… even if you are right, as a famous economist said, in the long term we are dead. there is a lot to be said for filling in holes in a timely manner.
and this overreaching hillbilly still thinks there is something to the notion that beyond a certain level of wealth, or inequality of wealth, the spending of the rich is not only not pro-growth, but pernicious.
oh, heck, Kalerberg. you are talking big government there. don’t you realize the golden age was when we had no government and all fought each other with clubs for the biggest share of mastadon meat.
that’s pretty much Buff’s view. once you have a Strategic Air Force, you don’t need no more steenking government spending.
Buff,
I think it is a risk to analyze GDP and Tax Rates during the Great Depression and WWII years without considering that that time period in American history was unique for the data we have to work with. The tax base was not only a different size, but a different culture, and the status of the United States in the world was of a completely different make-up.
“In 1950, with wages double or triple what they had been in 1935, labor force participation for women (33.9 percent) and for men (86.4 percent) reached new highs. While more women continued to join the labor force, the participation rate for men started what was to become a slow decline. At this time, women made up 28.8 percent of the U.S. workforce.
Retail food prices had risen sharply from 1934–36 levels. The price of a pound of butter had doubled, from 32 cents to 73 cents. Meat prices also had risen sharply, with a pound of round
steak increasing from 28 cents to 94 cents and pork chops from 26 cents to
75 cents per pound.”
“The average U.S. family’s income of $4,237 had increased by 178.0 percent since 1934–36. As for income distribution, 53.4 percent of U.S. families had incomes less than $5,000, with 25.0 percent earning less than $3,000. The median family income was $3,216. Average family expenditures during the same timeframe had increased 151.9 percent, to $3,808. This amount would have purchased $2,171 worth of goods and services in 1935 dollars, reflecting
inflationary forces. (Expenditures in 1935 were $1,512.)”
The Top Tax Bracket in 1950 was 84.4% @ $200,000. What was the Effect Tax Rate? How many people actually paid this percentage, and how much income was involved? Capital Gains tax was 25%.
You don’t need to answer, because you already know the answer, and so do I, and so does Mike….and thats what makes these posts so frustrating!
Coberly,
The more we can provide an atmosphere for the wealthy to feel comfortable in spending their money, the more the economy grows.
It is the reason the economy is stumbling….anybody with money is afraid to spend it, because they cannot see light at the end of the tunnel.
Last time I checked…..I didn’t notice anyone buying sports cars, luxury boats, and McMansion with an un-employment check.
Coberly,
What are you talking about? The government has spent more money every year compared to the year before it for as long as recorded data. The Government Revenue stream has increased every year. The government has received an increase in revenue every year with exception of [1930-1935], [1946-1947], & 2009.
There has always been plenty of money built into the system for infrastructure maintanance and new construction. The problem is that Democratic politicians have controlled most of the state governments for such a long time that they squndered it all on a social agenda.
What exactly do you think the Fuel Tax was supposed to fund? Does it fund what it is supposed too? Is there plenty of money to fund what it is supposed to fund?
Amen about point number #2 I suspect that if you where to do an EIS on the discovery of America it would result in no voyage, as a number of folks died because of it due to the interchange of diseases. Also no Transcontinental Railroad, and no Panama Canal, and likley no Erie Canal. The Engish settlement of the US would also have failed to pass. In one sense the environmental laws prefer doing nothing even if long term its the right thing to do. They are two short term.
After reading the book about Hoover Dam as it was it was a close thing that it got built taking a lot of political log rolling to get the job done.
Darren
whatever I was talking about you didn’t get it.
“the government has spent more money every year than the year before…” well, except for the exceptions that “run” notes, what else would you expect in a growing country, growing economy?
not sure what you mean by “squandered it all on a social agenda.” i would think even a right wing nut case would understand the need to keep a few poor people healthy enough for the army in between business cycles, not to say potential employees and customers.
as for the gas tax… around here it is spent on roads, by law. can’t be spent on anything else… though i think we might have passed a law recently to allow some of it to be used for the highway patrol. no doubt you are one of those “good drivers” who can go a hundred in heavy traffic and don’t need no steenking highway patrol. but the other people who pay the tax don’t agree with you. it’s called democracy.
see, here’s your problem. you’re okay with forcing me to pay for “national defence.” but you scream bloody murder if i ask you to pay something to keep the soldiers’ kids alive during recessions.
so i’ll make you a deal. you use your taxes to pay for guns, and i’ll squander my taxes on social programs to keep future soldiers alive.
deal?
watch Darren’s head spin with this one
Darren, you don’t know who Michael Farraday is (was), but
He was kept alive by “welfare” as a child.
He invented the science of electricity and magnetism.
He made you a hundred times as much money as you have ever spent on “welfare.”
And he worked for the government while he did it.
Run, which of these statements of yours do you think is more applicable/true? “Total federal revenues declined in fiscal year 2001 for the first time since 1983, mainly because of the Bush tax cuts.”
Or perhaps this one: “Even taking into account the stronger revenue growth now projected for fiscal year 2006, real per-capita revenues have simply returned to the level they reached more than five years ago, when the current business cycle began in March 2001. (March 2001 was the peak and thus the end of the previous business cycle, and hence also the start of the current business cycle.)”
So in one statement the cause for revenue loss is the Bush tax cuts, and then later it is the business cycle. Some folks still do not understand that “business cycle” is an economic euphemism for time frames between recessions.
Remember, your own provided information tells us that in 2001 we still had a “surplus” even with the Bush tax cuts and the declining business cycle.
lyle
i guess no one was doing environmental impact studies in 1492 because the rivers hadn’t caught on fire yet. and there werent seven billion people in the world.
times change.
brains do not.
darren
glad you didn’t notice that. sammy has been telling me about all the welfare queens driving cadillacs to pick up their unemployment checks. but the real bonanza is social security. trips on the love boat. vacations in the south of France… come on, join the fun. sammy’s picking up the tab.
whatever Darren is using for a brain… probably some cheap chinese junk made for the American market
one can’t help enjoying the “reasoning” he exhibits here.
the poor rich. now that they have all the money, we need to provide them with an atmosphere where they can feel comfortable spending it.
meanwhile the unemployed are not buying luxury goods with their unemployment checks.
yes, it all checks out.
we need to take away those unemployment checks so the rich can feel comfortable.
Darren,
first, Mike has done an excellent job at keeping the differecnes in money straight over the years he’s posted. Don’t worry there.
You did post the important aspect though. I don’t accept the idea that the economy of either the US or World are close enough to compare between pre-1945 and today. IN almost anyway. Mike and I have gone back and forth on this topic multiple times and economic theory is no help. As Mike pointed out awhile back economics is really not a sceince but more in a pre-Copernicous stage like Astronomy was. Why I tend to call economics more closely aligned with astrology than astronomy. And astronomy is a lot less complex.
So yes its very frustrating since the 1-D analysis doesn’t help in a mutli-deminsional space.
And ignore coberly, he seems to be havnig a rough patch these days. His ad hominums and passive-aggressive non-responses have hit a new all-time high.
Islam will change
Buff
you don’t seem to know what an ad hominem is either. so i’ll tell you what i told sammy. if i was arguing against your argument to an audience and i said, “you can’t trust Buff because he’s a pederast.” that would be an ad hominem.
but if i said TO Buff, “that’s stupid.” that would be ordinary informal argument. if i said, “Buff, you are stupid,” that would be an insult… but not an ad hominem.
So far, i don’t think i have used any of those against you, Buff. Though Sammy deserves the insult… i mean to let him know i wish he’d go away. As for Darren he is teetering from “your argument is stupid” to “you are stupid.” i think i already know which way he’ll fall, and may have tipped my hand.
now, look at your own, Buff’s, style of argument, and tell me about ad hominem, or stupid insults.
you don’t even have a cause-and-effect style of thinking in your body. so you throw out sound bites and if they make you feel good… after all you get to hear what you need to believe… you figure you have “won that round.” don’t feel too bad. it is the normal way of human thinking and arguing. it just doesn’t get us anywhere, except into wars.
so Mike shows across time and different circumstances that higher marginal rates do not lead to lower growth, and your argument, which never varies, is “gee, Mike, there must be some other reason for that correlation.” and that, of course, proves, for you, that there IS some other correlation. after all, the One True Faith could never be wrong. those correlations are just God’s way of testing us.
oh, forgot to mention, you, Buff, don’t seem to know what passive-agressive means. just another impressive sounding word you can pull out of your hat, and give an owlish look, and all the little darrrens and sammys will go ooooh! that was a goood one!
keep it up Buff. and always remember that the truly important distinction in life is Democrat vs Republican.
CoRev:
What is neat about talking to you, MG, and Sammy is you really do not understnd what you read. You are C&P artists and nothing more. As I have posted elsewhere there are multiple reasons for the decline.
– The unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
– The Bush 2001/2003 tax cuts
– The recession
– Greenspan
– etc.
All and including the “etc.” had a role in the gradual decline. Cutting spending and skewing greater tax breaks to the 1% of the taxpayers who make >$500,000 will not spur the economy onward to what it needs to be or reverse the decrease in Participation Rate.
But you see, you love the C&P rather than a reasonable dialogue and I am giving you exactly what you desire . . . C&Ps. You seem to be selective in which you choose to requote:
To your 2nd citation, lets add this (which you ignored):
“In contrast, in previous post-World War II business cycles, real per-capita revenues have grown an average of about 10 percent over the five and a half years following the previous business-cycle peak. By this stage in the 1990s business cycle, real per-capita revenues had increased by 11 percent.”
It appears growth from 2001 to 2006 has not superceded or come close to what was experienced in previous recoveries. Indeed, I feel I am safe to say, Participation Rate was still considerably less than what had been expericenced immediately after the 2001 recession (66.8 to 66.2).
Bush and Greenspan squandered the budget surplus created during the Clinton years and skewed much of it and its impact on ~1million taxpayers. What Hoover would not do, George Bush did do by increasing the income of a small portion of the taxpayers.
But what was the revenue growth occurring from? Labor intensive industry or was it from the Financial Services sector which was basically gambling on Wall Street. 40% of the corporate profits up till that point came from that sector and we are not discussing bank telllers.
Keep cherry picking . . .
Coberly:
These are the members of “No”rquist. I am getting ready to write each of my legislators asking if they are members of ALEC or have signed “Norquist’s pledge. ALEC is an org which has an agenda and Norquist is an ass.
Run
a little book “Kaubki Democracy” by Eric Alterman has lots of stuff tending to support what we think we already know about what’s been going on. Note, I don’t say “proves..”, but i suppose if a person were interested in as much proof as these things allow, and thought the time would be worth spending, this could be a useful place to start.
I don’t know that Norquist is an ass… not that he isn’t; i just don’t know. But there are three hypotheses.
!) normal human stupidity. he has three ideas in his head (like most of us) and he is just working out what he believes.
2) just politics. he knows how to get the ear of the …normaly stupid humans who vote… and what he says, and the R’s do, with willing help from the D’s… is designed to put “them” in power for the next thousand years. that seems to be working out for him.
3)he is evil. one of those who wants to increase the sum of human suffering.
i don’t know that one and three matter… just my personal fairy tale…. but two… that matters… and they are beating us. and of course they don’t care about the suffering. and of course they are immensely helped by that normal human stupidity.
Run,
…Talking Points much?