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IPFS News Link • Economy - Economics USA

The 1950s Economic Golden Age Is a Myth

• https://fee.org, by Daniel J. Mitchell

In my decades of trying to educate policymakers about the downsides of class-warfare tax policy, I periodically get hit with the argument that high tax rates don't matter since America enjoyed a golden period of prosperity in the 1950s and early 1960s when the top tax rate was more than 90 percent.

Here's an example from Politico of what I'm talking about.

Well into the 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was above 90%. …both real GDP and real per capita GDP were growing more than twice as fast in the 1950s as in the 2000s.

This comparison grates on me in part because both Bush and Obama imposed bad policy, so it's no surprise that the economy did not grow very fast when they were in office.

But I also don't like the comparison because the 1950s were not a halcyon era, as Brian Domitrovic explains.


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