This guy is a Nut Job with a short memory. First of all, we were coming out of a World War in the 50´s and I´m pretty sure most everyone was paying taxes. Spending domestically was low and we didn´t have the Welfare State we do today. Does this guy EVER utter the words "Reduce Spending"???

Except that there were all kinds of legal tax shelters that allowed you to keep your effective tax rate much lower. This guy should be send to north korea.

Progress. Maybe in his next column Nobel Prize Krugman will come out of the closet and admit what Democrats actually want: a 100% tax rate on all Republicans. Why stop at 91% Paul, when that´s soooo not compassionate enough?

If we want to go back to the 1950´s, we were also battling communists abroad and communist sympathizers at home. let´s bring all that back, too. FBI security checks, loyalty oaths, blacklisting, surveillance of communist sympathizers.
I suspect Paul Krugman would be blacklisted out of his job.

I am so sick of this moron.

No one, I mean NO ONE paid those high tax rates.

1) There were tons more deductions
2) There were many more loopholes
3) When I started paying taxes, just in the early 80s, one example of many, you could deduct 100%, yes that is 100%, of your credit card interest!

When I was a kid and my dad first explained taxes to me, that would be early 60s, he said, "The government takes somewhere between a third and half your salary". This was the common rule of thumb. Self-employed usually socked away a third of their salary to cover their taxes. This was what my mom did, who had her own small accounting business, from 1963 to 1973.

Paul, you ignorant slob. To get to the booming 50s we would have to spend trillions just like the US did in the 40s. Remember we bombed all our competition into the stone ages in the forties? There was no competition so capital and labor was concentrated in the US. So of course our economy boomed. Today, much as the socialist want to believe, if we raise tax rates and allow unlimited union participations, there wouldn´t be a US. Cause all the money and jobs would be in countries that like rich folks that supply jobs.

The Almighty Union killed the Twinkie as surely as it killed Chevrolet, GM, Chrysler, Jeep, etc., etc. (Ford didn´t drink the Kool-Aid, but got blamed for it anyway.) Hate Krugman nearly as much as I hate what the unions have become.

Why is he leaving 9% back? Take it all. Since 11/06/2012, it is scum like you who define ´fairness´ anyway.

And the word "Twinkie" has a very different meaning to Krugman.

Folks you need to Read all the lib comments below for insight into the warped minds of educated libs. They are the party of grievance nothing more.

btw, K-man is also nutz if he thinks "Atlas Shrugged" is about 1950s Eisenhower America.

I took the advice of one of the posters and read the comments at the end of the article. Conclusion: Liberals are not only mentally ill, they are dangerously deranged.

Yes, some of the ´rich´ are greedy and obnoxious. Most highly execs, though, are paid on productivity. If they can bring the company big bucks, then they will be paid big bucks.

I believe the real issue is...why are there so many poor? What life decisions did they make, or not make, to put them in the positions they are in? There is still a lot of opportunity in this country to be financially successful. They are a drag on our economy. Why? They are the ones we should be concentrating on.

Krugman, a Princeton, NJ resident(well, his wealthy wife owns the home there) is a fool.
There are many many large homes in Princeton that were put up by the accountants who hid that wealth during the %91 rates era.

The higher tax rates are still being paid. Now they are imposed in the form of EPA, OSHA, and all the other government agencies stacks of rules, regulations and laws. Back in the ´50s, business was easier and less expensive to start and operate. People were smarter too: They didn´t have to be told that coffee could burn them, etc.

All those government agencies that write the laws, rules and regulations have been a boon to lawyers. The government fines companies and then blows the money in other areas. The Gulf oil spill money from BP is going to the government coffers- not to the people hurt by the spill.

Paul Krugman is our Howdy Doody!

Let´s get this out of the way first... Krugman is lying.

I´ve been seeing this admiration for the 91% top marginal rate and smaller disparity of earnings in the 1950s, often combined with the simpleton liberal cackling about how the economy was booming despite that 91% top tax rate that kicked in pretty quickly. So I took a look into it and here´s what they aren´t telling you....


First, executives and other white collar workers weren´t living a life of austerity. Companies and executives evaded the top margial tax rates through expense accounts and company benefits that includes mansions, servants, vacation homes, and yacts. A 1958 Yale Law Journal article titled "Expense Accounts for Executives" by V. Henry Rothschild and Rudolf Sobernheim conservativele estimated expense account spending at $5 billion, evading $1-2 billion in taxes, allowing executives to live well beyond their salary means. What they fail to realize is that those loopholes were closed as rates went down.

Second, the economy of the 1950s boomed because the US was running a massive trade surplus, thanks to much of Europe and Japan having been bombed flat by WW2.

So if they want to replicate the miracle of the 1950s, all we need to do is put all of those loopholes back, raise the top rate back to 91%, and then bomb Europe and Asia flat. Think Obama and the rest of the left will go for that plan?

I can´t quit thinking about the scene in Paternity when Burt Reynolds´ character (newly transformed into a nutrition Nazi) sets a Twinkie on the rail of (I think the Staten Isle Ferry) and tells a pregnant Beverly D´Angelo:

"See this? There are so many preservatives in this thing, I could leave this here & it will still be standing after this Ferry has been reduced to rust. Don´t eat it."
(loose paraphrasing)

She rolls her eyes. Hmmmm . . . I WONDER if that´s why he never got anymore work? (pun intended)

Despite many invitations to do so, Krugman has yet to name a country that taxed its way to prosperity.

If a 91% rate is OK, is there a rate that´s too high?

If 91% is OK for the rich (their fair share) and the constitution provides that all citizens are equal before the law, then 91% is OK for all.

#11 beat me to the punch. Krugman´s understanding of "Atlas Shrugged" is just as warped as his understanding of taxes and economics. He operates in a totally altered state of being.

The "rich" don´t have "income" to be taxed on, they have wealth.

I´ll start listening to Krug the Thug when he volunteers to turn over 91% of his earnings to the IRS. That includes his muliple tax shelters.