in 1970 our dollar was at its strongest. CEO's made 25x the average worker, and our standard of living was the highest it has ever been in American History. The top marginal tax rate was double what it is today.
Today our CEO's make about 250x their average worker and our standard of living is going down.
Do CEO's work 10x harder now then they did then? No. Were they happy with what they got? Yes, they had to be and it worked fine. The only reason we are told otherwise is because that CEO can make a quick unnecessary buck by convincing you that they won't be able to hire you if you don't give them tax breaks, or repeal the estate tax.
The fact is that all rich people do with the tax breaks are to save it and invest it which causes crisis. Basically they pass around the money to each other, and some to the investor class, and nearly none of it goes to blue collar Americans.
This is a quote from FDR's Chairman of the Fed explaining the Great Depression:
"As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption; mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery. Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped."
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