Republicans seem to have a thing about rolling back the clock to the good old days of Ronald Reagan. According to CNBC, in last September’s Republican Presidential debate, the candidates mentioned Ronnie an astonishing 64 times.
They apparently think that the country was at its most prosperous during the wonderful Reagan administration.
The Huffington Post reviewed data from the Reagan years and compared it to data from the current day.
And guess what?
Back in the Reagan years, corporations paid an effective tax rate of 31.7 percent. Today those corporations pay a rate of only 22.8 percent on their profits. This means that the US Government now collects a whopping $166.7 billions per year less than they would have gotten in the 1980’s.
That’s right. If corporate lobbyist had not been able to shape our economic policy, and if corporate lawyers weren’t taking advantage of every loophole and tax break, this country would have$ 166.7 billions more every single year.
Imagine what we could do with that money.
We could start by paying out the estimated $25 billion it would take to provide universal preschool to every 4 year old in the nation.
And that would certainly leave enough money for the US government to cover the $65 billion dollars that students currently pay annually at our public colleges and universities.
Which would still leave the government with about $78 billion dollars to play around with.
So.
I had to combine this information with the revelations from the recent Oxfam Report that was written about on this site. That report highlighted how much money corporations get from the government in the form of corporate welfare (loans, loan guarantees, bailouts, tax breaks). Even worse, it reported just how much money is being parked in offshore banks by those same corporations so that they can pay even less money in taxes.
It all kind of makes me wish that we were living back in the good old days when Ronald Reagan was in charge.
Featured image by betancourt via Flickr. Available through Creative Commons License 2.0.
