When we lower taxes across the board, it benefits the wealthy. When we lower the top tax rates, it benefits the wealthy. The only time the working and middle class citizens benefit is when we lower tax rates specifically for them, and I can't recall this happening in a long time, since Kennedy, I think.

Those were tangible and gave the poor and middle class some extra money to spend.

As I recall, they came at the price of an across-the-board tax cut that benefitted high income earners enormously. I think we got $600. It was $600, right? Anyway, the Democrats made the Republicans include that in exchange for supporting the bigger gift to high income earners. I'm not sure it was a good trade, and I think across-the-board income tax cuts are bad for the middle class.

I just wanted to get a sense from people who did live through those times how they felt that changes in tax rates affected them personally. Also, it helps to get an objective data backed opinion as well. Thank you.

The problem was, we failed to recognize how good. People thought that moon landing just happened by itself, the freeways were built by magic elves, and someone saved a lot of S&H Green Stamps to build that new post office. When Reagan came along and told them it was all worthless, all broken, all a waste of money, they fell for it. Then Reagan shifted the economic power of the government away from building things for all of us, and toward enriching some of us. Greed is good, and government is the problem. When you ask who would buy that crap, the answer is right next door, if you can pry them away from Fox News long enough to listen to your question.

"Over a longer timeline, we can see if there exists a correlation between taxes on the wealthy and GDP growth. Unfortunately, we find no correlation between the two. Cutting taxes on the rich appears to have resulted in no increase in the rate of GDP growth. According to the logic of tax cut advocates, the post World War II boom should never have happened given that tax rates on the the top earners were exponentially higher than they are now (something to keep in mind when Republicans claim that raising taxes on the rich back to what they were during those disastrous Clinton years (as Obama has been trying to do) will stifle economic growth).

tax rates from clinton years

0-26,250 15%
26,250-63,550 28%
63,550-132,600 31%

tax rates after bush tax cuts

0-9225 10%
9225-37,450 15%
37,450-90,750 25%

one of the best things obama's admin did is keeping the tax cuts for the middle class while raising rates on the rich

so for example income tax on 64,000 was 6% higher under clintons watch which is about 3700 bucks...so unless you think 64,000 grand is rich ,there is a real difference

i have never seen it mentioned on du but a big part of trump's appeal is he says no income taxes for the first 25 grand...i do not think that is doable but it makes for great rhetoric

but that is possibly because making more money bumped me into a higher tax bracket.

a years pay would by a new Mustang. When I retired in 2013, a years pay would buy a new Mustang. A top of the line, but still a new Mustang.

send it in every quarter, makes it hard to forget a 6% swing

one thing that i would like to see is a doubling of the personal exemptions ...while everyone even the rich would benefit some the big advantage would be to the working poor

recall a period of tax increases or decreases where you saw a real difference in take home pay (excluding those of you who are in the 1%).

It worked out to about $270/month extra in our paychecks due to lower taxes. We were both active duty military at the time, so definitely not 1%.

I somehow think that today's republicans are not talking about lower taxes for the rest of us, just the 1%. Maybe years ago they were, but not anymore. Please don't take that to mean that I am challenging your comment in any way. Just thinking about how the greedy republicans are trying to scam the public with the promise of "lower taxes" for the masses.

It's actually pretty easy to see whether or not a tax cut helps or not. Look at the taxes for a given income before tax cuts, and then the same income after tax cuts.

Whatever the marginal tax rates do, it doesn't have much of an effect. Deductions and exemptions usually buy-out any non-wealthy tax hike, tax shelters usually shelter upper-end income (much of which is capital gains, anyway).

One tax that did affect things was the increase in the payroll tax, but it was mixed in with other changes to the tax code at the time.

One larger change has been a reduction in the amount of corporate tax paid as a percentage of government revenues. Of course, this was directly in tandem with a sharp increase in social spending, largely funded by the payroll tax. Lots of spinning with those numbers, but I'm not sure what valid conclusions can be drawn from it. ("Spin" nearly entails "invalid inference.&quot

Which is why it enrages me when I hear most middle class people go off about taxes. It really doesn't amount to much one way or the other. That is the bottom line.