April 11, 2011
The fictional television series “Mad Men“” does a great job dramatizing the astonishing cultural, social, and political transformation of the United States since the early 1960s. A new report (pdf) from the Institute for Policy Studies now adds some insight into one of the key economic differences between then and now.
This graph from the report compares the actual income taxes paid by the rich in 1961 and 2011. As it happens, 1961 falls right between the time covered by seasons one (March to November, 1960) and two (February to October 1962) of “Mad Men.”
Source: Institute for Policy Studies
Back in 1961, Don Draper and his partners at Sterling Cooper paid somewhere between 27 and 43 percent of their income in federal income taxes. Their counterparts today pay somewhere between 20 and 24 percent. As the IPS report argues, we don’t need austerity, we need tax increases at the top.
This post originally appeared on John Schmitt’s blog, No Apparent Motive.
