In for a Penny, In for a Pound
BROCKWAY, CEORGE P.
The Dismal Science IN FOR A PENNY, IN FOR A POUND BY GEORGE P. BROCKWAY Last October, just before the stock market crash, one Peter G. Peterson had an article in the Atlantic that caused a...
...This claim was in furtherance of the claim that it would be a mistake to ask the wealthy to pay for their share of the deficit...
...Maybe he's saying the incentive of a lowered tax rate will boost thousands of people from the $150,000 class to the $200,000 class, which would now have more members and consequently a higher total income...
...Is this what Mr...
...Now, I'm going to throw a lot of figures at you to show you what's happened in the past 10 years, and I beg you to be careful how you use them...
...Does he want us to believe that they're doing whatever it is they do without half trying...
...The average annual earnings of the lucky ones who worked a 52-week year were $9,828 and $8,802, respectively...
...I think these people know very well what they do...
...it's the top bracket Peterson is talking about, so we'll talk about that too...
...If so, he didn't mean much...
...They profess to be very worried about the deficit and are ready even to admit that it grew because of the tax cuts...
...To keep a level playing field, we'll consider only what is called earned income, for increased interest or dividends or rents would go also to remittance men, who know nothing of incentives since they do nothing anyhow...
...Indeed, in spite of recent studies funded by the IRS, I'll stand right up and say that half of the wealthy taxpayers are honest...
...In 1977 they were $189.00 and had fallen to$169.28 by 1987...
...He astutely left the Cabinet the following year, and since has been an investment banker as well as a tireless agitator in the press and on TV...
...Does he think it honorable of them to have done this (quoting Iolanthe yet again) "By taking a fee with a grin on [their] face/When [they] haven't been there to attend to the case...
...This is the way multimillionaires are made...
...In that way, the wealthy as a class would report 1.4 times as much at the lower rate as at the higher, and the total taxes paid by them would remain the same...
...surely Peterson must have meant something else...
...With twice as many making $2 million, their rate could fall in half, and the total taxes paid by those poor chaps would remain about the same...
...Let's explore the possibilities, for he seems to think he's hit upon a great social truth...
...He continues to talk darkly about "entitlements," to warn that universal medical care will be the death of us, and to plead for a tax on consumption...
...This is thought to be bad for everyone because these people are, by definition anyway, the most productive among us...
...Peterson was President Nixon's Secretary of Commerce in 1972...
...After reading Peterson's article, I started to do a column on what's wrong with it, but it would have taken a year's worth of this space...
...By 1985 (the latest figures in Statistical Abstract of the United States) there were some 17,000 Americans in that fast-growing class...
...In 1986 dollars it fell, from $25,443 in 1977 to $24,095 in 1986...
...Peterson telling us that many of the wealthy are dishonest...
...but the after-tax income of the median family was down 5.3 per cent...
...The 1977 figure was slightly above the poverty level, the 1987 figure considerably below it...
...A $200,000 income taxed at 70 per cent had to become at least $280,000 taxed at 50 per cent...
...But they don't propose to give up those cuts...
...The fact remains that if they paid more taxes after a 50 per cent rate than they did after a 70 per cent rate, their marginal-rate income had somehow to go up at least 40 per cent...
...Although the morals are slightly different, the mathematics of the incentive argument is the same as the mathematics of the cheating argument...
...This is what is known, among less exalted players, as bracket creep and is mostly due to inflation, which we agreed to rake out of our playing field...
...The five new boys were all making well over a millionlastyear...
...It's the things we know that ain't so...
...By 1986, the numbers had risen to 7 million and 34.6 million, respectively...
...Some are in 1986 dollars, some in 1977 dollars, and some in current dollars, but within each category the figures are comparable...
...so they quit working, or maybe take longer lunch hours...
...The mathematics is unimpeachable, but perhaps Peterson is focusing on something different...
...For if Peterson is right in his figures even though vague in his reasons, the maxitax cuts gave enormous gifts to the wealthy and nibbled away at the incomes of everyone else...
...In 1977 there were 5.3 million families, or 31.7 million people, living in poverty...
...Let's try another approach...
...Then if taxes paid in the two years are equal, our equation would be .70x = .50y...
...So I ask: Does Petersonmean that our can-do people will increase their doings by 40 per cent just because the tax rate has been cut...
...I'm no economic determinisi, so I don't hold with that...
...As the tax rate was cut, there came a great leap forward of executive salaries and perks, of lawyers' fees and doctors' fees, of tax shelters and arbitrage deals, of interest rates and capital gains...
...And the after-tax incomes of the wealthy more than doubled...
...Of course, those who didn't work full time didn't do so well...
...so it took only raises of a few hundred thousand to double the number of players in the $2 million bracket and thus double the taxes paid by the superstars...
...Or put it this way: If they lack incentive to do what they're supposed to, why don't they get out of the way and let someone else do it...
...Note that a two-earner family, working full time, wouldn't come close...
...There weren't any milliondollar-a-year ballplayers before the cut, and few others with that kind of income...
...We also need some ground rules...
...Then for every honest wealthy taxpayer who reported an income of $200,000 in both years, there would have to have been a wealthy cheat whose income was really $360,000, who didn't report $ 160,000 of it when the rate was 70 per cent, but who cheerfully reported it all when the rate fell...
...They want us to look ahead to a sales tax (which they call a consumption tax), because such a tax falls very little on them but very much on the middle class, especially the lower middle class, and on the poor...
...One sentence has nevertheless kept nagging at me...
...They come from Economic Report of the President, 1988...
...Their pretax income went up at least 40 per cent...
...We will call ? the amount taxed at 70 per cent, and y the amount taxed at 50 per cent...
...This explanation is more plausible than the others, and there actually was a highly unrepresentative sample of its possible effect in the sports pages of the Times the other day...
...Peterson doesn't give one, but let's guess that to count as wealthy in his book, one has to have $200,000 in the top bracket...
...Peterson meant...
...Is Mr...
...We can make do, however...
...That's too preposterous for anyone to believe...
...This year, when the rate is somehow lower, there are 10 in the golden circle...
...After a certain point, they are supposed to get tired of working for Uncle Sam...
...To be sure, our big-time producers are used to getting much of their income from stock options and such, but the 1986 law, by taxing capital gains as ordinary income, has largely eliminated that particular incentive...
...We should try to get them working again by allowing them to hold on to more of what they get their hands on...
...Then consider the median family income (1986 dollars...
...No, they want us to put all that behind us...
...Well, I'll make another guess at what Mr...
...weekly earnings were down 10.4 per cent...
...These leaps account for the tax collections Peterson celebrates...
...We want a level playing field, as the Wall Street Journalwould say...
...He was as responsible as anyone for the 1983 boost in Social Security taxes and the partial tax on Social Security benefits...
...On another level, it's very shabby indeed...
...Fieldslike filing system, I can lay my hands on one, but only one, set of old tax instructions...
...Finally, consider the after-tax income of the median families (this is where the wealthy shone like burnished gold...
...I'll name two: (l)Thedifferences we' re going to consider will not have anything to do with tax shelters, because Peterson speaks only about the taxrate, andanyhow shelters are greatly restricted by the new law...
...It will be convenient to have a standard of wealth...
...We'll start with a little algebra...
...Having spent evenayearinNixon's Cabinet, he can't believe that...
...And why not...
...As Phil Rizzuto would say, that's not too shabby...
...It has been said at least since the New Deal days that high taxes sap the incentive of producers to produce...
...Now, as I read Peterson, he seems to be saying that if you take all the $200,000and-up incomes as above defined, add them together, and tax them at 50 per cent, you will collect more taxes than you would if you taxed them at 70 per cent...
...He wants us to keep our eyes on the taxes paid, and not notice the jump in disposable income...
...Solving the equation for y, we have y = .70x/.50, or 1 Ax...
...Low rates are often said to take the incentive out of cheating on taxes...
...The Dismal Science IN FOR A PENNY, IN FOR A POUND BY GEORGE P. BROCKWAY Last October, just before the stock market crash, one Peter G. Peterson had an article in the Atlantic that caused a lot of talk on commuter trains...
...the median income was up 1.7 per cent...
...Peterson is a great sleight-of-hand artist...
...And that's not all...
...and (2) inflation won't have anything to do with our calculations either...
...When we mention the incomes of the wealthy, we'll mean just the part of their incomes that is taxed at the top rate—70 per cent or 50 per cent, as the case may be...
...In short, from 1977 to 1986, poverty was up a third...
...In other words, the amount taxed at 50 per cent would have to be at least two-fifths greater than the amount taxed at 70 per cent...
...I quote: "We now know, for instance, that a maximum tax of 50 per cent actually generates more revenue from the wealthy than a maximum rate of 70 per cent, and provides real incentives for budding entrepreneurs...
...By an aberration of my W.C...
...When you include the increase in Social Security taxes (largely engineered, as aforesaid, by Peterson), the fall was much greater...
...This is what Peterson and his ilk are fighting for...
...This was marginally up, from $28,966 in 1977 to $29,458 in 1986 (latest figures available...
...As the chorus sings in Iolanthe, "Hearts just as pure and fair/May beat in Belgrave Square/ As in the lowly air/Of Seven Dials...
...Peterson meant...
...But their after-tax income jumped 233 per cent, from $60,000 to $140,000 (and under the new tax law will jump again —to $190,000 or more...
...Next look at average weekly nonagricultural, nonsupervisory earnings (1977 dollars...
...And if he believes that, does he believe the cheaters would suddenly become honest once the marginal rate dropped...
...But it doesn't really make any difference what reason Peterson gives for the behavior of the wealthy...
...First, remember the poor...
...It calls to mind an Artemus Ward saying I have cited before: "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us in trouble...
...Last year, when the tax on the wealthy was, well, too complicated for me to explain, there were five ballplayers with annual wages in excess of $2 million...
...To quote Iolanthe again: " In for a penny, in for a pound...
Vol. 71 • June 1988 • No. 10
