>"The American Dream" was made possible by government spending to subsidize home purchases. The 1950s housing act.

No, it wasn't. The american dream was the reality of huge swaths of the middle class. Who do you think all those pre-1950 single family homes were built for? And of those that didn't live in a single family dwelling, the other inhabitants of a multi-family was often related to them.

The subsidy just made it a little more accessible down-market.

>What made america great was taxing the hell out of the rich

Um, what? Look at tax receipts relative to GDP. We've never taxed harder than we do now. Even if you assume we took it all from the rich back then it was still less.

The only way this comment only holds if you look at fed income tax only and you look at the nominal rate, which is farcical.

▲ tern 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I see arguments like this all the time these days, and it feels important to me to have the story straightened out.

Can anyone recommend a resource that comes to a definitive, non-partisan conclusion (even if the answer is: "it's complicated," or "neither")?

(Separately, it's interesting to ask LLMs questions like this: https://chatgpt.com/share/68cc9e37-8a2c-800e-aeef-dc88977f56...)

	▲	ckemere 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/80552/total-tax... (Though this doesn’t capture top end federal income tax rate.)

▲ dh2022 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Re: "Look at tax receipts relative to GDP. We've never taxed harder than we do now. " - would you mind sharing some data sources for this. Thanks a lot!

	▲	chessgecko 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Wouldn’t say never harder, but it’s been pretty flat. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
	▲	theteapot 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Crude starting point from ChatGPT: U.S. Corporate Tax Revenue as a Percentage of GDP (1900–2020s) Decade Corporate Tax Revenue as % of GDP 1900s ~0.1% 1910s ~0.5% 1920s ~0.8% 1930s ~1.0% 1940s ~4.0% 1950s ~4.3% 1960s ~3.5% 1970s ~3.0% 1980s ~2.5% 1990s ~2.5% 2000s ~1.3% 2010s ~1.0% 2020s (est.) ~1.0% (varies slightly) U.S. Individual Income Tax Revenue as a Percentage of GDP (1900-2020s) Decade Income Tax Revenue as % of GDP 1900s ~0.0% 1910s ~0.5% 1920s ~1.5% 1930s ~3.5% 1940s ~7.5% 1950s ~8.0% 1960s ~8.0% 1970s ~8.5% 1980s ~8.0% 1990s ~8.0% 2000s ~8.5% 2010s ~8.0% 2020s (est.) ~8.0% (varies slightly)

▲ kingkawn 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

“a little more accessible” is condescension of the poor