The article is about how the post-1975 period differs from the pre-1975 period. So it's demonstrably not a natural law. Natural laws don't change over time.
From 1960 to 1985 the top marginal tax rate crashed from 90% to 30%. And then of course there's the demise of private sector unions, the effects of computerization, etc.
Arguably, it was always a natural law, but the 1970s were an inflection point after which capital was allowed to accrue advantages at a much faster rate.
It's mostly a myth that there was a 90% marginal tax rate. It's technically true, but when the top tax rate was removed they also removed all the loopholes and deductions that were being used to reduce the effect tax rate on top earners to below 45%. All the while the proportion of tax receipts as a percentage of GDP has remained constant.
Meanwhile, the proportion of taxes paid by the top quintile earners has increased from 55% in 1980 to 70% by 2013.
In 2017 the top 1% of income earners paid 38.5% of all taxes, vs the bottom 90% who paid 29.9% of all taxes. The top 50% of taxpayers paid 97% of all taxes in 2017.
But all this ignores the main fact, which is that actual rich people make most of their money not as income, but as unrealized capital gains. High marginal rates on income taxes affects high-earning professionals. Not the private jet crowd.
> Meanwhile, the proportion of taxes paid by the top quintile earners has increased from 55% in 1980 to 70% by 2013.
Citing the amount collected from the top quintile is moving the goalposts a bit. A typical 20%er is someone like a successful dentist. Sure, they probably have a stock portfolio, but that's for funding their retirement.
It doesn't help that the statistics are always presented in misleading ways. We really need the stats to be stated in terms of tranches that exclude the higher ones (eg. top 0.01%, 0.01-0.1%, 0.1-0.5%, 0.5-1%, 1-5%, 5-10%, 10-20%, 20-40%, 40-60%, etc.). Instead, lumping the 1% in with the 1-20% just co-opts the upper-middle class into defending the interests of the 1% and above.
> But all this ignores the main fact, which is that actual rich people make most of their money not as income, but as unrealized capital gains. High marginal rates on income taxes affects high-earning professionals. Not the private jet crowd.
Of course. That's where discussion of wealth inequality (and the estate tax) takes over from income inequality.
Successful dentists are not much different than fast-food workers compared to multi-billionaires already.
Only taxing commerce can be sustained over the long term, and there need to be tariffs calibrated to insure any currency leaving the land of its fully-backed legal tender is replaced with incoming amounts of the same in a timely way.
Of course nationals need to be taking fair profits in both directions, and everything will eventually work out just fine.
I wouldn't call it a myth. High income earners both then and now have a lot of ways to avoid paying tax, so they don't pay nearly as much as the top marginal rate. It's also true that the top marginal rate used to be much higher.
> Meanwhile, the proportion of taxes paid by the top quintile earners has increased from 55% in 1980 to 70% by 2013.
Isn't this exactly what you would expect with growing income & wealth inequality, so long as your tax system maintains some aspect of progressive taxation.
I'm not claiming I know what is actually happening in the US, it's complicated and I haven't spent enough time looking at it to be confident.
However, it's true that if there is a) an increase in total income that b) is entirely captured by a small percentage of people, then naturally their share of the total income tax paid will increase and everyone else's will decrease as a fraction unless the system is regressive in some way.
"Progressive" here doesn't mean higher earners pay more in aggregate, it means (by definition) that their marginal rates are higher that people with lower income.
Even if you taxed them to the bone it wouldn't be enough so you're going to need to tax the bulk of the commerce instead of just the residuals after it falls into their relatively idle hands.
> actual rich people make most of their money not as income, but as unrealized capital gains.
Technically, they make most of their wealth as as unrealized capital gains. It doesn't become money until they realize the gains, at which point it is taxable income.
What's the average effective tax rate for high-net-worth+ individuals if unrealized capital gains are included as income? It seems like people get an increasing level of control over their taxes as their networth increases. Choosing when to exercise options means you have some control over AMT. If you invest in indices, it looks like direct indexing has a lot of tax benefits over an index fund. You can get variable and fixed rate loans against your investment accounts.
It's not a good idea for tax minimization to be the main goal of your investment strategy, but it seems like people can get access to a large portion of their investments without actually realizing capital gains.
> What's the average effective tax rate for high-net-worth+ individuals if unrealized capital gains are included as income?
That's a completely pointless question. If I own 50% of GameStop, my net worth will have gone from $650 million to $12.2 billion to $1.8 billion in like 45 days. Sure, this is an extreme example, but it happens over longer stretches of time to a ton of the richest people.
How exactly do you expect to tax that movement of those unrealized gains?
> You can get variable and fixed rate loans against your investment accounts.
That you eventually have to pay off. The money you pay it off with will be taxed.
That is just the base Federal rate. After NIIT, State, etc it can be >35%, which is actually quite high for a country where the cost basis is not inflation-adjusted. That is higher than most countries in Europe.
> From 1960 to 1985 the top marginal tax rate crashed from 90% to 30%
Nobody paid 90%. The tax rate reduction was countered with the closing of loopholes. (There are still a lot.)
Evidence for this is the nearly constant fraction of GDP collected in taxes. The other points are correct. Also, real incomes have both increased at the top end and shifted up for the population.
Don't forget things like the Panama Papers and how companies/super-rich figured out how to create thousands of shell companies to hide wealth, and that the journalist who revealed all of this was then murdered.
Marginal rate is not effective rate. In fact, when Reagan cut the top marginal rate multiple times while also changing loopholes the effective tax rate on the top increased after some of those changes [1].
The law might be the same, but the environment can change around the law. From tax rates and economic conditions to the power of labor can all shift how we respond to that natural law.
Wealth can continue to generate wealth, which we can then tax and redistribute. The natural law hasn't changed, but how we work around it has.
The natural law is there, but there was counterbalance from the government taxation and unions. That balance has been lost so the natural law is taking over.
You wouldn't say that gravity doesn't exist because someone is holding up a ball and that it suddenly appears when the person lets go of the ball. This is what happened to monetary policy in the 20th century. The government abdicated its role in the name of unfettered corporate growth and now we have billionaires.
I interpret Pfhreak's comment to mean un-checked capitalism will naturally result in wealth consolidation. The article describes how we loosened our management of this natural law and witnessed a more rapid wealth shift as a result.
The article is about how the post-1975 period differs from the pre-1975 period. So it's demonstrably not a natural law. Natural laws don't change over time.