Tax Rates, 1990 to Now

This conclusion just begs for comment: "making it impossible for the rich to have grown richer solely at the expense of the poor."

Well of course. After all, by definition, the poor don't have much savings (stock) or income (flow). Consequently, the very rich can only extract so much income from the poor. That means the very rich got much richer at the expense of the poor, the middle class, the upper middle class, and the merely rich, extracting income from each group according to their relative means. The middle class would be the most lucrative source of income since this group is the largest in number, has the necessary stock and flow of money-denominated wealth, and its interests are politically under-represented. QED. Not sure why or how Krugman missed this one.

"I'd like to point out that on taxes at least, Krugman's position hasn't changed from 1990. He still thinks the tax rates we had in 1990 were about optimal. It's just now tax rates are lower than they were in 1990..."

what would he do to extricate the US from this mess? ... Tax increases: "We should be getting 28% of GDP in revenue. We are only collecting 17%."

When he said that, getting that extra 11 points of GDP in revenue would have required a 90% increase in income tax bracket rates across-the-board (arithmetically, assuming no revenue lost to the higher rates, e.g. new corporate rate hiked to 66%).

Really, I can't understand why he says such things to the press in Asia but not in his own column here in the US, where Nancy Pelosi and all the other Democratic party leaders he is trying to influence can read them. :-)

I stand corrected.

D. Boon:

The economy is not a zero-sum game. The rich can get richer by generating wealth. (There is a lot of rent collection going on, however.)

As for 1990, US spending was about 21% of GDP, so given a debt I could see why one would try to go over that to get this back in balance. 28% is vastly more than any time since WWII, though. (And I'm not even sure about WWII.)