Tax Rates And Job Creation

Here's a conversational tidbit for you, via ThinkProgress. The next time your Republican friend or colleague (or, heaven preserve you, close relative) brings up the "fact" that raising taxes on the "job creators" (i.e., the wealthy bastards and the corporations they control) is a "job killer," remind them that during the Bill Clinton presidency, which was our most recent era of substantial economic and job growth, the top marginal tax rate was 39.6 percent... and small businesses grew twice as fast during Clinton's term as during the Dubya Bush years. In other words, Reaganomics and Bushonomics just plain didn't work, despite all the GOP's fancy arithmetic.

On the other hand, the numbers that DO add up, those from Clinton's presidency, reveal that a moderately high top marginal tax rate (39.6 percent is by no means the highest individual tax rate ever; that was 90 percent, under... sorry, GOPers... Eisenhower) leads to lower unemployment, greater productivity and yes, solid economic growth.

There is one other reason I know this is true. I experienced it firsthand. I am a living, breathing example. The Bill Clinton years were the golden age for my one-man self-employed contract IT business: I seldom lacked for work during those eight years, and my income grew steadily. Momentum carried my little shop through the first couple of years of GeeDubya Bush, but after eight years of economic "malfeeance" (Bush-speak for "malfeasance"), the bottom dropped out, and I had no choice but to close the doors. Leave it to a Republican president... an unelected Republican president... to kill "job creation" for fun and profit, while preserving the privileged class untouched. That's what Republicans do. That's who Republicans are.