Really? Income taxes were about 8.2% of GDP when Reagan took office.
They were about 8% when he left.
Social insurance taxes were about 5.5% of GDP when he took office - but thanks to his decision to dramatically increase SS taxes, that amount increased to about 6.2% by the time he left office.
Do you guys have a manual to spin everything?
No, we have facts.
% of GDP?
Social Security tax?
So if I save 4000.00 in income tax and spend 50.00 more a year in SS tax what does that mean?
The percent of income paid in taxes is the most comparable measure of the total tax base. That's why "we" use GDP in many cases.
The social security tax was increased under Reagan. Hence, revenues from social security increased - and your comparison about paying $4,000 less in one and paying 50 more in the other is stupid. The differences were laid out right there in the post - and they weren't a ration of 4000:50.
what are you trying claim with that last post
That people where paying more in SS tax than they where in income tax?
If you can't follow the simple math I presented, I can be of no service. Try reading it again.
There is nothing simple about that information
I went and looked it up and it has as much to do about nothing as anything I have ever seen
This is what is wrong with our country today
At the end of the day your Brooking s spread sheet shows that Clinton was robbing the working man and Reagan was not
Over that 8 year period there deficits were not that far apart, when you look in the context of Obamas
http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/08/news/economy/reagan_years_taxes/index.htm
After Reagan's first year in office, the annual deficit was 2.6% of gross domestic product. But it hit a high of 6% in 1983, stayed in the 5% range for the next three years, and fell to 3.1% by 1988. (By comparison, this year it's projected to be 9% but is expected to drop considerably thereafter.)
So, despite his public opposition to higher taxes, Reagan ended up signing off on several measures intended to raise more revenue.
"Reagan was certainly a tax cutter legislatively, emotionally and ideologically. But for a variety of political reasons, it was hard for him to ignore the cost of his tax cuts," said tax historian Joseph Thorndike.
Two bills passed in 1982 and 1984 together "constituted the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime," Thorndike said.
The bills didn't raise more revenue by hiking individual income tax rates though. Instead they did it largely through making it tougher to evade taxes, and through "base broadening" -- that is, reducing various federal tax breaks and closing tax loopholes.
For instance, more asset sales became taxable and tax-advantaged contributions and benefits under pension plans were further limited.
"What people forget about Ronald Reagan was that he very much converted to base broadening as a means of reducing deficits and as a means of tax reform," said Eugene Steuerle, an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute who had helped lay the groundwork for tax reform in 1986 and served as a deputy assistant Treasury secretary during Reagan's second term.
There were other notable tax increases under Reagan.
In 1983, for example, he signed off on Social Security reform legislation that, among other things, accelerated an increase in the payroll tax rate, required that higher-income beneficiaries pay income tax on part of their benefits, and required the self-employed to pay the full payroll tax rate, rather than just the portion normally paid by employees.
