Stop Comrade Obama NOW!!!
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE TO STOP AMERICA’S DANGEROUS RUSH INTO THE ARMS OF SOCIALISM!!!! If Obama isn’t stopped immediately he’ll tax us all to death just like his SOCIALIST predecessors, Eisenhower and Nixon and Reagan and … errr, wait a minute….
lullaby pit 
This is obviously a production of Obama Nazis.
Really smart and well informed Obamanazis, though!
Do you have similar graphs which track corporate and small business taxes? Also, I’ve seen this graph several times and it’s never made sense to me. That “top marginal rate” is pretty variable, isn’t it? What’s the top bracket and how many people were in it? Also, how does this correspond with the total US budget in real dollars. Is GNP up, down, or flat? Finally, when did stock options come into play? Are they taxed differently? Basically, I’m asking if the huge personal taxes correspond with decreases in corporate taxes and/or stock options?
Ubertramp, all those questions are things I’m trying answer in the midst of all the climate research and writing I’m doing, but the problem is that it’s from lots of different places – IRS, BLS, Census, Dept. of Commerce, etc. And most of those places have “good” data of different durations. Digging it all out is a royal pain and I’m not even sure where to start with gathering some of the older data.
Marginal rates today are much higher than most people actually pay, however – during the Bush years, effective tax rate (what the wealthy actually paid) was in the low 20s (percentage) due to much lower capital gains taxes than income taxes. I personally feel that effective tax rate is a better indicator, but I’m not an expert (even though I pretend to be one here at S&R from time to time).
How much more plain can it get? In 1921-1929 the wealthiest paid the least taxes, and ruin ensued. The highest rates are in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, when employment was plentiful and well-paid. So isn’t the argument that low taxes for the wealthy means prosperity for all JUST A BUNCH OF FROG SPIT?
Yeah, I know it’s a bitch. Hah. I didn’t expect an answer. I tried to figure it out the first time I saw the graph posed up above and ended up giving up on it since I have zero background in business and I couldn’t differentiate between “good” and “bad” data. I guess my point was that the graph that got posted above isn’t terribly useful because it’s cherry picked data.
Believe it or not, I run into something similar to this with immunology data all the time. For example, we are seeing increases in radiation-induced inflammatory cytokines in the spleen. We’re also seeing increases in anti-inflammatory cytokines at the same time. And what it comes down to is a timing issue. Both are being produced, at differing degrees depending on where you are in the process, and they are “competing” with one another. If you ignored the pro-inflammatory data, you’d just say there was an increase in anti-inflammatory cytokines. And vice versa. But just looking at one isn’t really telling you the whole story.
My guess is you have a similar phenomenon with personal verses corporate taxes. Ditto with your environmental data.
I like Ike!