[quote=CA renter]Based on your chart, it’s easy to see that higher-income earners were paying significantly higher rates back then than they do now. So why all the whining from those who are currently paying ~15$%, some of whom are paying 15% or less on incomes that are much higher than $250K, or even $1MM.[/quote]Who’s whining? But, beyond name callings, do you understand the differences between capital gains vs ordinary gains? The data I showed was for ordinary gains, NOT capital gains. In 1963, capital gains was 25%. This is at a time when the minimum tax rate was 20% and it was 26% if you make more than $4k ($28k today Dollar). So, that’s about equivalent to 15% today.

BTW, we don’t have tax brackets for people >$1M. The top tax rate is >$250k, so, unless you’re suggesting we should create more tax brackets for those extreme high earners, your accusations doesn’t really hold water.

I want low taxes for everyone. But those who point at prosperous times and say, look we had prosperity even when top tax rate was 60-90%, so we should raise their rates back to those level. I just like to also point out that during those time, the bottom rates were also much much higher than today. You can’t just selectively say, if A work in a certain timer period that it’s OK today, without looking at the entire equation back then as well. A is only a single variable within an equations with many other variables. Changing one variable without the other variables won’t give you the same answer you got during those times.

To your point (noticed I didn’t use the word whining) about capital gain being equal to ordinary income, can you point to a time when we had the same rate of capital gain as ordinary income?