The Bee Gees talk about taxes
And a few other things.
The segment I’ve cued up is only six minutes long, but if you want to hear just the tax part it’s from 7:02 to 9:14. This interview took place in 1978, when Barry was 31 or 32 and Robin was 28 (Maurice had the flu that day and didn’t appear). Note the cigarette, perfectly normal back then but anathema now.:
In the interview Robin predicted that the Brits would soon turn on Labour and vote them out of office for the next twenty years. That turned out to be pretty much the case.
It’s something you used to hear from time to time. I’m remembering the actress Sandy Dennis made an appearance on What’s My Line? in 1973 and in a discussion of her recent activities said ‘you make any kind of money in this country, the government takes it away from you.’ Monty Python aficionadoes will remember the Dennis Moore skit.
Democratic Party economist Bradford deLong was asked around 2009 at what marginal rate would the losses in revenue from people receding from productive activity exceed the additional increment of revenue from increasing rates and he said ‘70%’. From 1936 to 1981, the ultimate marginal rate was between 69% and 92%.
I’m sure that the economic parallel between then and now has not escaped our host.
Robin’s prediction of the political consequence to ruinous fiscal policies can be somewhat applied to the democrat’s ruinous policies today, not taxation wise but certainly on how destructive the economic policies of the democrats shall prove to be.
BTW, does anyone under 40 have any idea who the guy in the middle is? Given the utter ignorance that the recent Mark Dice polling is revealing, I’d bet that many wouldn’t recognize the name Johnny Carson…
Art,
in other words the administrations of FDR through Carter…
Ah but times are different now. We are about to implement a Global minimum corporate tax rate. It’s full proof, don’t you know?
BTW, does anyone under 40 have any idea who the guy in the middle is?
Even I (over 60) confused Merv and Phil in my head for a moment and thought of this old Phil Donahue clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZDXvgUxAgQ
Watch out for government greed! I’ve never seen the full 46 min. interview. I’ll have to check it out eventually.
TommyJay,
Great clip. Friedman wiped the floor with Donahue’s premises but as I recall, in the succeeding days Donahue revealed Friedman had, had little impact on Donahue’s core beliefs. Donahue was easily intelligent enough to understand the validity of Friedman’s responses. But embracing Friedman’s facts would have destroyed Donahue’s self-image, so he choose to remain in his mental jailcell.
Which of course is the all too common response of liberals when exposed to Jordan Peterson.
Ackler,
Only for the insufficiently connected.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Robin’s comment that U.K. corp. dividends were taxed at a 98% rate. Yikes.
Something that motivated me to get a bit more interested in investing was the Bush era reductions in cap. gains and dividend taxes. I do believe that dividend taxes especially are a form of double taxation, assuming that the corporation has already paid significant corp. taxes.
When you own a common stock, you own a piece of the company. When that company pays a chunk of corp. taxes, you paid your fair share. Dividend taxes are on top of that.
Here is the more recent history of dividend taxes in the U.S.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_tax#United_States
The cool thing is that back in the Bush era, a lower income person only paid 5% in div. taxes, but better yet they now pay 0%.
The fly in the ointment is in the definitions of “qualified dividend, non-qualified dividend, and ordinary dividend.” My recollection was that back in the early 2000’s the main distinction was between “qualified” and “non-qualified.” Now it appears that the main distinction is between “qualified” and “ordinary” with the latter getting hit with much higher taxes.
Generally, if you are getting your dividends from Pepsico or Kimberly Clark corps. you will get the low rate. Companies that engage in financial engineering or partnerships don’t fair as well. Partnerships don’t pay corp. taxes, so there you are trading one form of taxation for another.
_____
Back to Robin Gibbs. If the general dividend tax rate is 98% (maybe that was the top dividend tax rate) then the obvious result would be that no corporation would pay out dividends. Let’s do stock buy-backs instead, or rely on a pure capital gains investment strategy.
Everybody smoked and everybody was thin…..
Neo, talking about The Bee Gees taxes jogged my memory of this short little video. Do you know it?
https://youtu.be/kvsgnKwfL3M
It takes us to The Bee Gees birthplace, Ellan Vannin (Manx language: “Island of Mann”). Interviews with all the friends and neighbors who knew them “back when.” A tour of the many places they lived.
Charming commentary from the three brothers and their mom Barbara.
Didn’t you really want to see the twins’ nursery school?? Barry’s elementary school? The maternity hospital where they were all born?
There’s quite a “Brigadoon-ish” feel…as if you’re visiting another world….
Anyway, the tax-talk begins at 12:26.
Barry describes how their status as Manx-born citizens provided them advantages as to tax rates. Throughout their lean years the brothers would retreat to their homeland to claim some relief.
Again, Barry’s down on the Labour Party (understandably) for a tax rate of 80-something per cent.
Stick with the video another minute or so to see some spectacular scenery…cliffs with seabirds…rolling grassland. Barry has said these are the “Greenfields, where we used to wander…” which he sings about on his new “Greenfields” album.
The music you hear in this video is Robin Gibb singing the unofficial national anthem “Ellan Vannin.”
GB,
Correct. I hope the sarcasm wasn’t lost in my post.
And that 20-ish years ended with Maggie giving one of the greatest observations about liberals ever made:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdR7WW3XR9c
}}} I do believe that dividend taxes especially are a form of double taxation, assuming that the corporation has already paid significant corp. taxes.
This happens all the time, the government(s) don’t give a damn.
When you buy cigarettes (not that I’ve ever done it, don’t really like ’em and would rather not have people smoking them around me, but, having principles, this majorly pisses me off, regardless: )
More than half the price of a box of cigarettes is state and local taxes. But cigs are charged sales tax… at the price of the box. So you’re actually paying sales tax on the taxes the government takes
WHAAAAAT The F**************? That is the most insane thing I’ve ever heard of. Doesn’t matter how I feel about cigarettes, it’s preposterously absurd.
YUP. Come the revolution, one thing we do is abolish double taxation.
I didn’t know the BeeGees grew up on the Isle of Mann. Ruth’s video even has a short bit on one of the world’s most famous races, the Isle of Mann TT (Time Trial).
Here’s a promo for the modern IoM-TT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyGpW1gV4JI
One full Isle of Mann lap onboard a bike.
Take dramamine to watch the whole thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KzBnuxDnYQ
}}} but as I recall, in the succeeding days Donahue revealed Friedman had, had little impact on Donahue’s core beliefs
I’ve been noting this for a long while, and, just to prove it, here’s a self-reference to the notion that is now over a decade old, from the semi-erstwhile NoOilForPacifists site (semi-erstwhile, as its creator, Carl, no longer operates it, and hasn’t since partway into the Obama admin — he’s a beltway lawyer, and did not want to risk the business issues that might result from being openly critical of Teh One’s policies, knowing they would be quite vindictive)
And here’s the notion in question: the Liberal Midnight Reset Button®
https://nooilforpacifists.blogspot.com/2011/07/political-other.html?showComment=1311492332903#c890392449415087439
tl;dr:
The Liberal Midnight Reset Button® operates to protect Officially Accepted Liberal Dogma® from challenges to the latters’ “integrity”, by expunging any and all challenges before they are folded into long term memories during sleep. I.E., crap stays in their heads for a day or less, if it’s not Officially Accepted Liberal Dogma®
Here’s a more recent example of my explanation of it:
https://monsterhunternation.com/2020/11/09/election-2020-the-more-fuckery-update/#comment-99392
OBloody Hell,
I saw a brief TV spot on gasoline taxation in California recently. It was a little too fast for me to get a handle on all the numbers, but there are a half dozen different taxes and fees and it maybe adds up to roughly 1/3 of the whole cost. I think there’s still a fee for the new gas station fuel tanks put in because of the abortive MBTE requirement from years ago.
I’d never heard of the Isle of Man Time Trial. Yikes! An average of two deaths a year! Insane.
Rufus,
I recall one of the multi year winners of the TT race, a youngish Irishman, being interviewed a number of years ago. Like most sports interviews he was asked about his plans for the future and he gave a frank response. He guessed he was going to hang it up very soon, rather than tempt fate and end up dead or in a wheelchair.
For motorsport’s fans, there is a interesting documentary made by Roman Polanski about his good friend Jackie Stewart and Gran Prix racing. There is a lot of discussion of the fatalities in that era, but at least in race cars they were able to cut the fatalities by at least a factor of ten through better engineering and by using tethered helmets.
With motorcycles there is not much that can be done. Though I recall some discussion on these super powerful race engines. The racers don’t like the engines with the really quirky and peaky power curves. Too dangerous.