Bakari Chavanu's List: Economics

• Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders distanced himself from the Eisenhower-era top marginal tax rate of 90 percent during last week’s Democratic presidential debate, but as he prepares to detail his support of democratic socialism in a major speech Thursday
• Sanders is described as supporting a top marginal tax of 100 percent for high earners or the establishment of a maximum wage.

  • Marginal tax is simply the amount of tax paid on an additional dollar of income. As income rises, so does the tax rate. This is different than a flat tax rate where you pay the same rate of tax no matter what your income level is.
• but it will not be as high as the number under Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was 90 percent.”
• “No. That's not 90 percent of your income, you know? That's the marginal.”
• Sanders is described as wanting to “make it illegal to amass more wealth than a human family could use in a lifetime.” He would do that, the article said, with “a 100 percent tax on incomes above this level ($ one million per year)” and “would recycle this money for the public need.”
• he still had the issue on his mind while serving in the House in 1992, entering into the Congressional Record a Los Angeles Times op-ed written by Sam Pizzigati, the author of The Maximum Wage. In that piece, Pizzigati details President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s proposal for a “100% war supertax,”
• Pizzigati noted that there’s been momentum in recent years to cap executive salaries and bonuses but that “Sanders saw the importance of thinking about that much earlier than everybody else.”
• Benjamin Spock, who advocated capping incomes and inheritances. Spock believed that “not only should every family of four receive a minimum income of $6,500 annually but the wealthy should be entitled to a maximum income of $50,000 and a minimum annual inheritance of $55,000,” according to a Burlington Free Press article from September of that year.

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