The most prosperous decade of the 20th century was the 1950s.
The top tier tax rate in 1950 was 84%, and that was the lowest it would be until 1964. The rest of the 1950s were at 91%-92%.
The important thing to remember is that nobody ever paid the top-tier tax rate. Instead, they spent their income. When they found themselves $10,000 over the line in 1955, and about to pay $9100 to Uncle Sam, they said "Hold up. Let's spend $10000 on something useful and deduct it as a business expense".
That spending turned into paychecks for the workers who produced the purchased item.
$10,000 over the line in 1988 meant they got to put $7,200 into their stock portfolio, send $2,800 to Uncle Sam, and the worker is laid off because they had no incentive to actually spend their excess income.
Infographic is correct, though it left out how he destroyed labor unions and a bunch of other stuff, but you can only fit so much in there. Reagan and his despicable cohorts like Gingrich were the beginning of the end for not just the ability to reach the middle class, but indeed for the middle class itself in this country (as his contemporary partner in crime, Thatcher was for the UK).
It was an absolute tragedy. If Trump wasn't coming back in, Reagan would still hold the top rank in amount of devastation caused, but I'm pretty sure Trump will manage to surpass him on that front in his second term.
This man is responsible for the nightmare that is my life.
Fuck going back in time to kill Hitler, if I ever get into a DeLorean or a phone booth, I'm coming for that ass Reagan! THIS ONE'S GONNA BE FOR FREDDIE MERCURY!
Edit: Just got back, I think I got the wrong year or something, missed my shot too. Feds tried to stop me from getting back to the car, I got them to go bother some dickhead who wouldn't shut up about some Crazy Taxi movie or whatever the hell he was talking about. Can't try again for awhile, DeLorean's out of plutonium.
Jimmy Carter lost to him, and while looking back from fifty years later Carter looks progressive...
At the time there was a fracture of the Dem party from the left because they considered Carter too moderate.
The most important part of learning about our political history is understanding what we've lost over time. Like the existence of a party even remotely leftwing.
Quick edit:
A big reason for Carter's loss was the inability to solve the Iranian hostage crisis right before the election. Which we later found out Republicans colluded with Iran to not resolve it while Carter was in office, then the whole Iran-Contra shit.
Also reminiscent of how Nixon prolonged the Vietnam war for the same reason...
And I won't be surprised to find out in a decade Trump did the same with Israel.
Like, people kept acting shocked about current events just don't know we're watching reruns. It's like when people got excited about Game of thrones and waited years between seasons for cliffhangers. The books already existed and they could have just found out what happened.
But just like they wouldn't read the books, nobody wants to read a history book anymore.s
I know he was really bad, but Trump promised he will do everything in his power to be worse.
No offense, but mental institutions were/are horror farms. Could have been better, should have been better, never was.
Among the highest, if not the foremost rate of undeclared abuse. Dumping grounds for the unwanted, unrestricted experimentations for sadistic monsters, no-man's-land for the so-called human rights.
Whatever other evil might have been done, putting an end to those mental institutions can only be a kindness.
The mental institution thing... That's maybe not entirely fair. Prior to Reagan, most residential mental institutions were terrible places, worse than some of the worst prisons in the US. Closing them seemed better for the residents than keeping them open and attempting to reform. But it's certainly had a lot of unintended consequences.
the caption of a political cartoon i remember from back then:
"ronald reagan did for this country what pantyhose did for finger-fucking"
The working class and thus the creation of the middle class was subsidized by our government from FDR up until Reagan. The 1950s wealth and family focus BOOM was a result of this subsidization that began with FDR. It is why everyone (white and male) owned a house, a car, and had a job.
We are living the end result of the Reagan experiment, the flip from subsidizing the working class and thus subsidizing the creation of a middle class, which does not happen organically in capitalism, to the subsidization of corporate and the top 1% instead. The claim was it would be more efficient to subsidize corporate and simply have the wealth trickle down through the rest of the economy.
This, right now, is how trickle down pans out after the 40yr experiment. We’ve equalized woman and non white people under the law, great, but did it in a time without subsidy. So now we are all equally shit upon, barring some holdover family accumulations dating back to the 50s.
And now, drum roll, we’ve elected President Musk, the grand winner of said 40yr subsidization experiment, the ultimate welfare queen, to decide our working class government efficiency going forward.
I wonder how that will work for working class going forward?
Fascists don't actually care about anything other than attacking the poor, minorities, women, etc.
Reagan was "great" for that.
The number of people that died of AIDS each year under his watch was in the millions. Not 90k.
First president I ever became aware of. Fuck him and everything to do with him.
If this next administration isn't the actual downfall of democracy and just another blip in history I wonder if trump will have the same sort of vibe to his legacy that Regan has.
As non American I was ready to just move on and let them suffer in their own cycle of nonsense. But we can't even do that. Since jokes about invasions are increasing at an alarming rate. Jokes about countries sovereignty became completely unfunny after Feb 2022.
and now he is burning in hell with Tatcher and Pinochet ❤
Yes, ofc, it's not like we remember him for his acting career.
He’s the shining poster child of the GOP!
Reelected in 1984 when the national unemployment rate was 10%
Ronnie was a senile racist POS and he pushed the deregulation for the financial sector.
Thanks Obama.
He was only acting!
