Beyond that, according to a 2012 report from the Congressional Research Service, "Analysis [...] suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution."
That research looked at the last 65 years of tax rates compared GDP, and the researchers found that lowering taxes on the rich doesn't cause the economic pie to get bigger.
It just means that the richest in the country get a bigger slice of the economic pie.
Because that's what Reaganomics does, it concentrates the wealth at the top.
If Riley were really concerned about growth, he'd be supporting Sanders' plan to invest in US infrastructure and US jobs.
And if the Wall Street Journal were truly concerned about a healthy economy and stimulating private consumption, they'd support very high marginal tax rates for the top 1% of earners.
According to research published earlier this year, the highest marginal tax rate paid exclusively by the super-rich should be 90 percent, where it was just after World War II under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and Democrat John Kennedy.
And guess what? the economy grew under Eisenhower because he maintained high taxes on the rich and on corporations, and then he used that revenue to invest in massive infrastructure projects, expand social services and invest in the US middle class.
It's time that the Wall Street Journal stop trying to make Bernie Sanders and other progressives seem radical for proposing that we tax the wealthy and close corporate tax loopholes, that we provide tuition-free college and paid sick leave, that we rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and that we provide health care for all.
These aren't radical proposals.
They're proposals that both Republican and Democratic voters overwhelmingly agree on, and that every other developed country in the world has already implemented.
For 35 years, Reaganomics and tax cuts for the rich have only benefited the rich, at the expense of the middle class and the country as a whole.
Notwithstanding the Wall Street Journal's deceptively promoting Reagan's failed experiment in "trickle-down" economics, Americans overwhelmingly want our nation to return to the "radical socialist" policies pioneered by Dwight D. Eisenhower and bring the middle class back again.
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