patrick.net

92% was the top tax bracket when the USA was creating jobs in the USA

Good find!

I think this is exactly what is causing most of our problems. Money buys government.

The mafia were good at buying the cops too. It was the bureaucrats at the IRS that took them down. No one in business who has to stick around and work for twenty or more years before they become wealthy gets away with screwing the people around them. They have to behave.

That's actually a really interesting thought. New to the forum so I don't know if you flushed that concept out more or not earlier.

But I don't think that everyone in the top x% got there purely by screwing people. They had to deal with people on a somewhat regular basis to get things done. And there's no way they could let their reputation fall to the point where people wouldn't continue to work with them.

But there would definitely be higher incentives to cooperate in situations where you have repeated engagements for a long period of time.

Steve Jobs didn't do it for the money. Anthony Mozilo did. Short term thinking, selfish, bonus oriented, sociopaths won't be motivated to destroy everything around them if they don't get to keep the money.