r/DiscussionZone

Forget the shouting match about the 91% tax rate. Yes, it existed (1944–1963). No, nobody paid it on their full income. Both sides are right, and both are arguing about a decoy. The real number in the 1950s was 55% — the measured, effective rate the top 0.01% actually paid, all taxes combined. Today, the 25 richest Americans pay 3.4% against their actual wealth growth.

That didn't happen by accident. It happened like a chess game — a few quiet moves, decades apart, each one repositioning the board while everyone argued about the loudest piece. Here's the game. The opening position: high rates, no exits. The 1950s code had the rich in check. The 91% bracket started at $200,000 — $2.4 million today, 45x the median household income. Capital gains were capped at 25%, sure — but dividends were taxed as ordinary income, all the way up the ladder. And dividends were how wealth got paid, because stock buybacks were illegal — repurchasing your own shares was market manipulation. Corporate profits had one road to shareholders, and it ran straight through the top brackets. A family living on $300K a year in dividends (~$3.6M today) paid full freight on every dollar. That's how you get to 55% — not virtue. No escape squares.

Move one: 1982 — free the rook. The SEC adopts rule 10b-18, legalizing buybacks. They go from zero to a trillion dollars a year, replacing dividends as the way corporations return cash. The play: a dividend is taxable the moment it lands. A buyback pumps the share price instead — same money, same shareholders, but now it's an unrealized gain. Invisible to the tax code until you sell. Which brings us to why you'd never sell.

Move two: 2003 — capture the dividend. Whatever dividends still got paid the old way get reclassified from ordinary income to capital gains rates. The income type that hit 91% under Eisenhower now tops out at 23.8% — below the 25% cap the 1950s reserved for capital gains. The rate that was the floor of privilege in 1955 is above the ceiling now.

Move three: the endgame — buy, borrow, die. Never sell the stock. Borrow against it to live — loans aren't income; the tax code can't see you. Then die, and stepped-up basis wipes the board: heirs inherit at market value, and every dollar of lifetime gain escapes income tax forever. This rule existed all along, but it only became the operating system of billionaire wealth once moves one and two made unrealized gains the dominant form of top-end income. The pieces interlock. That's the design.

Checkmate, in numbers: 1950s top 0.01%: ~55% effective Today's top 0.01%: ~41% on reported income Today's 25 richest, against actual wealth growth: 3.4% (ProPublica, from IRS data). Buffett: 0.1%. Bezos: under 1%. Several years of literal $0. All legal. And here's where "bankrupt the economy" stops being a metaphor.

Every dollar rerouted around the tax code is a dollar the country still spent — on defense, Medicare, roads, wars — and borrowed instead. Corporate tax revenue sank below the OECD average. The 2017 cuts didn't pay for themselves (CBO). The 2025 extension adds $4.7 trillion to deficits through 2035 (CBO again). The US now sits at roughly 125% debt-to-GDP — the steepest fiscal deterioration among major advanced economies — while the "growth will pay for it" promise runs 45 years past due: GDP growth averaged 4.2% a year in the 1950s under the 91% rate versus 1.8% in the 2000s under 35%, and the Congressional Research Service found no clear association between top rates and growth across six decades. Productivity rose ~80% since the 1970s. Wages flatlined. The growth went somewhere — check the scoreboard above for where.

So that's the game. Buybacks made wealth payouts invisible. Reclassification cut the rate on whatever stayed visible. Stepped-up basis erased the bill at death. And the tab for running the country didn't shrink — it just moved to the national credit card while the biggest fortunes in human history slipped quietly off the board.

We didn't just lower the tax on wealth in America. We rerouted wealth around the tax entirely — and billed the difference to the American people.

The guy can rape children & women, fix stock and crypto markets for personal gain, arrange for people to be murdered, create shoddy products to sell and pretty much steal money from under the noses of any legal department without even a smacked wrist.

How can he be stopped? Or is it very likely that he'll carry on doing this until his term ends?

Trump & Epstein just passed each other in the hallway - never really paid each other much attention.

From 1944 to 1963, the U.S. top marginal tax rate was 91–94%. It stayed at 70% until 1981. That's not a typo. Eisenhower-era America — the guy who built the interstate highway system and warned about the military-industrial complex — ran tax rates that would make today's pundits combust on live TV.

And before anyone types "nobody actually paid 91%" — correct, and the real number is worse for your argument. The 91% bracket kicked in above $200,000 in 1950s dollars — roughly $2.4 million today, about 45x the median household income. It wasn't a tax on workers; it was aimed squarely at the top few hundredths of a percent. The ultra-rich paid an effective rate of roughly 55% in the 1950s, all taxes combined. Today that same group pays about 41%. That's a 14-point cut for the wealthiest people in America over seven decades. And that 41% only counts reported income — measured against actual wealth growth, ProPublica's IRS data showed the 25 richest Americans paying a 3.4% true tax rate, with several paying $0 in specific years. All legal. Buy, borrow, die. Meanwhile that 55% from the 1950s still beats Norway's top rate today (~40%), matches Switzerland's, and sits right in Denmark's range (~52–60.5%). The "loopholes" defense doesn't rescue the modern tax code — it indicts it twice.

And before anyone types "the rich just used the 25% capital gains rate" — that only covered realized gains, one slice of the pie. Dividends were taxed as ordinary income back then, straight up the ladder toward 91% — and dividends were how wealth paid out, because stock buybacks were effectively illegal until 1982. Now trace what changed: buybacks became legal and replaced dividends (deliberately — they convert taxable payouts into untaxed unrealized gains, about a trillion dollars a year now). In 2003, dividends got moved to capital gains rates. Today the top rate on both is 23.8% — below the 1950s 25% cap. The rate that was the floor of privilege then is above the ceiling now. Every path in the 1950s code led to high ordinary rates; every path today leads to capital gains treatment — with stepped-up basis at death as a legal exit ramp to zero.

Here's the detail that gives the whole game away: "socialism" accusations were everywhere in the 1950s. Eisenhower railed against "creeping socialism." The AMA branded Medicare "socialized medicine." McCarthyism was at full boil. And through all of it, the 91% top bracket sat there — under a Republican president — and was never the target. Every government program was "socialism." The tax rate on the rich never was. The word has never been about tax rates.

It's a panic button, and it gets pushed the second any policy would move money from corporate profits back to workers — universal healthcare, higher wages, stronger unions, you name it. Why does it work? Because fear gets clicks, clicks get ad revenue, and cable news is in the attention business, not the accuracy business. "They want higher effective tax rates on income over $10 million" doesn't trend. "They want to turn America into Venezuela" does.

Meanwhile, the actual numbers:

U.S. productivity is up roughly 80% since the 1970s — wages didn't come close to keeping pace

Corporate tax rates were slashed from 46% to 21% since 1980, and U.S. corporate tax revenue as a share of GDP now sits below the OECD average — 88 profitable corporations paid $0 in federal income tax in 2025 on a combined $105 billion in profit

The top 10% now hold 72% of U.S. wealth — Gilded Age concentration, versus a far flatter 1950s

The U.S. spends more per person on healthcare than any country on Earth (~$14,900/year), still leaves tens of millions uninsured, and dies younger for it — 79.0 years vs. 82.7 in peer countries that spend a third less

And the part that really breaks the narrative: who's actually fiscally reckless? Denmark — the go-to "socialist boogeyman" — is running a budget surplus with debt around 27% of GDP and falling. Norway's $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund dwarfs its entire gross debt; its net fiscal position is deeply positive. Switzerland sits at 38%.

The U.S. — the one lecturing everyone about big government spending — sits at roughly 125% debt-to-GDP with CBO projecting a continued climb for a decade, the steepest fiscal deterioration among major advanced economies. The single biggest legislated driver: the 2025 tax cut extension, which CBO scores at $4.7 trillion added to deficits through 2035.

And yes — the sharpest pushback is true, so let's just say it: the Nordic countries don't fund their systems by only soaking the rich. Their top brackets kick in at 1.3–1.8x the average wage — roughly $122,000 in Denmark, $138,000 in Norway — versus $640,600 in the US. Add a 25% VAT on consumption, and the upper middle class is doing a lot of the lifting. But notice what that argument actually concedes: a nurse in Copenhagen pays top-bracket rates, gets universal healthcare, free university, and real safety nets back — and by international measures reports more personal freedom and life satisfaction than her American counterpart, who pays less tax and then hands the difference (and more) to insurers, hospitals, and student loan servicers. The Nordic model isn't "tax the rich." It's "everyone pays in, everyone gets covered." Call that whatever you want — it's running surpluses in market economies with private companies and stock exchanges. What it isn't, is socialism. And what the US definitely isn't, is fiscally responsible.

So the "reckless socialist experiments" are running surpluses and stockpiling trillion-dollar wealth funds. The country cutting taxes on top earners and calling it fiscal responsibility is the one with the fastest-deteriorating debt position in the developed world. Make it make sense.

Next time someone yells "sOciAliSm," ask them which countries actually have their fiscal house in order — while also delivering greater economic mobility, lower income inequality, universal healthcare, stronger safety nets, and higher measured levels of personal freedom and life satisfaction.

With influencers, or anyone popular for example, why? Why do I look up to them? Or why do people look up to them? I am never, ever, ever going to be that person, we all have free will. So why do people bandwagon over one person?