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A comment on Living on a Reduced Income in 1868. Parent comment

Re:Living on a Reduced Income in 1868 by anovikov on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @03:52AM (#32493526)
It is simply because class divide used to be a lot wider. We perceive things as going down only by comparison with unhealthily equal 1960s society brought about by 91% top marginal tax rate of the day. Pre-WWI world was extremely unequal and it was seen as normal. Anyone from the middle class could hire a servant.

In fact, even in the Soviet Union, engineers and even highly qualified workers (!) had full-time domestic servants in 1930s. Not after the war though.

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Re:Living on a Reduced Income in 1868 by rendall on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @04:03AM (#32493604)
> We perceive things as going down only by comparison with unhealthily equal 1960s society brought about by 91% top marginal tax rate of the day.

Interesting. You feel that the 1960s were too egalitarian?

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Re:Living on a Reduced Income in 1868 by truckerbill on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @07:15AM (#32494709)
Read the guy’s past comments…
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Re:Living on a Reduced Income in 1868 by gruez on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @08:47AM (#32495562)
>91% top marginal tax rate of the day

it's worth noting that even though the top marginal rate today is only 37%, tax as % of GDP stayed mostly the same since the 1960s. The difference can be explained by the fact that the 91% tax rate was accompanied by a plethora of deductions, which reduced the effective tax rate.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

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