The 13th amendment banned chattel slavery, but turbocharged penal slavery.

Deregulation in general and of the for profit prison industry in particular has made it so that there’s more slaves in the US now than there ever was before the 13th was passed.

Granted, penal slavery is of course nowhere near as bad as chattel slavery was, but it’s still slavery, which is morally repugnant barbary and outlawed in every civilized legal system i the world.

Go read it again; the word “except” is doing the heavy lifting here.

They wouldn’t want to do that because it would not serve their self-interests.

Do you honestly expect the fox to prevent itself from guarding the henhouse?

many of them are dinos, shills for the gop anyways, wouldnt have gotten anything done anyways.

could want

The democrats are cowards, the republicans are evil. If there ever is another proper election in the US, vote independent.

anyone have a source for this claim?

This was the 1983 tax cut. The longer term implication was people realized Laffer’s suggestion that there is a top rate that is so high it promotes evasion, avoidance and fraud was demonstrated to be likely true. A negative outcome was the GOP claiming further cuts would do the same when there’s no reason to believe it would.

taxes aren’t just about revenue, they’re a redistributive force in the economy and arguably their main purpose isn’t to fund the government but to prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth and reduce inequality.

Presuming this is a serious statement, why do you think this is the case instead of them funding the government which is what taxes have always been about? We didn’t care much about wealth inequality until the last 200-300 years. The ruling class has always cared about taxes.

if high tax rates were bad, and lowering them ‘fixed it’

It didn’t “fix” anything. The higher rates led to lower tax revenues. The cuts provided more.

then explain all the massive social benefits from 1940-1980:

1946-1980 as 1940-45 are war years and aren’t as great.

The US made up roughly 40-55% if the total GDP of earth in that time. As WWII destroyed the industrial capacity if most nations the USA and to a lesser extent the Warsaw Pact nations were the only ones manufacturing heavy equipment. By 1980 most of the world has either developed for the first time their own industry or revoltp what they had. This massive gap between the US population and everyone else is why things were so good.

inequality has skyrocketed since Reagan and the policies which dismantled new dealism. I hate the Democrats who helped facilitate the rise in inequality and the gutting of social welfare programs (Clinton especially) but to claim that reducing the top marginal rates was an unequivocal good thing is a pretty extreme narrowly focused claim.

There’s no “good/bad” in economics because it’s social science not a religion or moral code. I said it brought in more tax revenue which is accurate.

Inequality has skyrocketed because of anti-union sentiments and the fact that between 1991 and 2003 1/3 of the total labor pool of earth could suddenly be hired by Westetn companies (the fall of the USSR, liberalizations within China and India moving away from socialist economic policies drove this).

those who say so based on a loosely held ‘I’ve done the math’ argument are merely using a rhetorical gotchya - it’s not a sufficient socioeconomic historically supportable argument. if it was, show me all the benefits that increased tax revenue provided from 1990-present. I’ll wait.

No one is saying this. Your grasp on this history is flawed. You even have gone so far as to suggest taxes aren’t primarily about funding the government which is frankly “novel”. I wouldn’t be taking any kind of authoritative tone on this subject if I were you.

I have to work but I’ll tackle the second half later.

Tax fraud, tax evasion and tax avoidance are not the same thing.

Cutting the higher marginal tax rates caused more people to move money from less stable economies with looser banking regulations to US banks which resulted in increased tax revenue taken in.

If they’re saying “lib” and not “liberal”, then it’s sure not from American TV.

And you’re paraphrasing a television character.

Yes they were.

Yes and no, I’d say on that. Reagan really worked against unions, I agree. And democrats are always worried about how they are going to get paid. But there was a real turn toward “market solutions” for problems that had traditionally been addressed by government during this period, and I don’t believe it was entirely due to corporate bribes or financing. When Bill and Hillary attempted to change healthcare with corporate partners, I think it was more from their genuine belief that that was a new, better way forward. They were wrong, and I am sure that they benefited in terms of contributions, but I think it came as much out of their beliefs about the unpopularity of former democrats and the perception of economic malaise in places like England as it did from union weakness. The democrats could have helped rebuild the unions. They did not (and here I think you are right, because as time went on they really began to be paid well to forget the unions)

Yeah, maybe. I mean, the republicans at this time did start to resonate with the public, but I think it had more to do with the times and with Reagan himself.

Reagan was much more likeable than the likes of Goldwater, Buckley, or any other figure at the time. And he was attractive to the evangelicals, which became a whole new arm (with issues) of the party.

Also, of course, the economy of the 70s was just right for a party that could lean into hate, fear, & greed.

Reagan, though. He could sell all of it in a way that few others would have been able to pull off. I remember wondering at the time how he could draw so many in. People just liked him, horrible as he was.