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As I've mentioned before, I watch Hardball on MSNBC every day. I think Chris Matthews is fair and clear. Especially in this argument.
Chris is always arguing for good construction and manufacturing jobs - the same kind of jobs that built America during the boom of the 1950s. And I agree. Jobs that need to be done for infrastructure anyway.
The 1950s were good days for America in terms of growth and opportunity. (By the way, the top income tax rate in the late 1950s was 91% versus 35% today. And America grew at an exponential rate in the 1950s and 1960s.)
Things that make you go "hmm..."
No one actually paid that 91% rate in the 1950s. This was long before the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Abundant tax shelters were available for anyone successful enough to face the threat of such a confiscatory rate.
ReplyDeleteThe point is - Mark - that we had higher tax rates and the country grew. That simple. We had higher tax rates during Clinton's administration and the country grew. Lower tax rates do not always correlate with lower unemployment. That is the point.
ReplyDeleteGOP keeps saying give the wealthy more and more tax cuts and they'll create jobs. And yet - they aren't. We've had the Bush Tax cuts for a decade. And yet, at the end of Bush's term we headed into a terrible recession. We were losing 800,000 jobs a month. This is after years of the Bush tax cuts. The wealthy merely pocketed the money - they didn't create jobs. Which they are entitled to do, but don't sell the idea that the tax cuts will create jobs.