Data Download for Top Marginal Income Tax Rate
You can download the data used for Top Marginal Income Tax Rate in “Stuck on Stupid.” Click on the text in the text box, select it with CTL-A, copy it to the clipboard with CTL-C, and paste it into a spreadsheet.
| Year | Top Marginal Income Tax Rate |
| 1901 | |
| 1902 | |
| 1903 | |
| 1904 | |
| 1905 | |
| 1906 | |
| 1907 | |
| 1908 | |
| 1909 | |
| 1910 | |
| 1911 | |
| 1912 | |
| 1913 | 7.00 |
| 1914 | 7.00 |
| 1915 | 7.00 |
| 1916 | 15.00 |
| 1917 | 67.00 |
| 1918 | 77.00 |
| 1919 | 73.00 |
| 1920 | 73.00 |
| 1921 | 73.00 |
| 1922 | 56.00 |
| 1923 | 56.00 |
| 1924 | 46.00 |
| 1925 | 25.00 |
| 1926 | 25.00 |
| 1927 | 25.00 |
| 1928 | 25.00 |
| 1929 | 24.00 |
| 1930 | 25.00 |
| 1931 | 25.00 |
| 1932 | 63.00 |
| 1933 | 63.00 |
| 1934 | 63.00 |
| 1935 | 63.00 |
| 1936 | 79.00 |
| 1937 | 79.00 |
| 1938 | 79.00 |
| 1939 | 79.00 |
| 1940 | 81.10 |
| 1941 | 81.00 |
| 1942 | 88.00 |
| 1943 | 88.00 |
| 1944 | 94.00 |
| 1945 | 94.00 |
| 1946 | 86.45 |
| 1947 | 86.45 |
| 1948 | 82.13 |
| 1949 | 82.13 |
| 1950 | 84.36 |
| 1951 | 91.00 |
| 1952 | 92.00 |
| 1953 | 92.00 |
| 1954 | 91.00 |
| 1955 | 91.00 |
| 1956 | 91.00 |
| 1957 | 91.00 |
| 1958 | 91.00 |
| 1959 | 91.00 |
| 1960 | 91.00 |
| 1961 | 91.00 |
| 1962 | 91.00 |
| 1963 | 91.00 |
| 1964 | 77.00 |
| 1965 | 70.00 |
| 1966 | 70.00 |
| 1967 | 70.00 |
| 1968 | 75.25 |
| 1969 | 77.00 |
| 1970 | 71.75 |
| 1971 | 70.00 |
| 1972 | 70.00 |
| 1973 | 70.00 |
| 1974 | 70.00 |
| 1975 | 70.00 |
| 1976 | 70.00 |
| 1977 | 70.00 |
| 1978 | 70.00 |
| 1979 | 70.00 |
| 1980 | 70.00 |
| 1981 | 70.00 |
| 1982 | 50.00 |
| 1983 | 50.00 |
| 1984 | 50.00 |
| 1985 | 50.00 |
| 1986 | 50.00 |
| 1987 | 38.50 |
| 1988 | 33.00 |
| 1989 | 33.00 |
| 1990 | 33.00 |
| 1991 | 31.00 |
| 1992 | 39.60 |
| 1993 | 39.60 |
| 1994 | 39.60 |
| 1995 | 39.60 |
| 1996 | 39.60 |
| 1997 | 39.60 |
| 1998 | 39.60 |
| 1999 | 39.60 |
| 2000 | 39.60 |
| 2001 | 39.10 |
| 2002 | 38.60 |
| 2003 | 35.00 |
| 2004 | 35.00 |
| 2005 | 35.00 |
| 2006 | 35.00 |
| 2007 | |
| 2008 | |
| 2009 |
Consumer Price Index:
The US Census Bureau maintains a time series, E-135: Consumer Price Indexes (all items) from 1800 to 1970.
Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1
E. Prices and Price Indexes: Series E-135; p.211 (pdf)
Why Stuck on Stupid?
Seventy years ago the leaders of both US political parties turned away from the policies that had created an economic powerhouse we call the Roaring Twenties. For ten long years Americans suffered through wrenching economic dislocations: deflation, inflation, a four-year economic contraction, endless unemployment, mindless political experiments, and ruthless attacks on businessmen for political gain as their leaders stayed Stuck on Stupid.
Today, after a twenty-five year economic boom, Americans are once more faced with a political elite that wants to monkey with success. It wants to raise tax rates. It wants to restrict trade. It wants to increase government power.
It‘s time to look back and remind ourselves how it came to be, starting in 1929, that America got itself Stuck on Stupid. Otherwise it could happen again.
1929-1939: “A Decade that will live — in stupidity.”
Democratic Capitalism
Three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets
and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
Education
“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State
Government Expenditure
The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Mutual Aid
In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society