Word: lowering
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...only worsened the skew. Though income tax rates were reduced in all brackets, the cuts were tilted heavily toward the upper end of the scale. In addition, Social Security taxes about tripled, to a top of $3,379.50 this year. The blow fell most heavily on the middle and lower classes, since the Social Security tax exempts the portion of wage and salary incomes above $45,000 a year and all income from interest, dividends and rent. The result: according to a Congressional Budget Office study, only the top 10% of the population received a significant net tax cut between...
...think, rightly or wrongly, that the Reagan expansion will continue and eventually improve their own financial status. Those who are hazily aware that their relative position is slipping often refuse to admit, even to themselves, that they are losing upward mobility. More important, the poor and many in the lower middle class by and large may grumble but do not vote; the ranks of those who do vote are filled disproportionately by the rich and upper middle classes...
...raise tax rates on people making more than $40,000, they will actually work harder. Unfortunately, they will probably also work harder to avoid taxes." Indeed, the most immediate threat to prosperity is the budget deficit, and many ideas for reducing it involve more austerity for the middle and lower classes -- for example, a value-added tax, a kind of national sales tax, to discourage consumption and promote savings, and further cuts in Government programs aimed at the working poor. And however attractive the idea may sound, the fact is that the budget deficit cannot be reduced significantly by taxing...
...doubt that the predicament of the Underclass would be mightily helped by the strenuous participation of middle-class blacks, but that does not mean it is theirs to solve. The state of the Underclass is not a black or a white problem, a middle-class or a lower-class problem, but an American problem that requires a national solution. In the White House, a new President will have to create a genuine sense of community that includes the realization that American society cannot be truly great unless those stuck at the very bottom are offered...
...extraordinary purge reflected the discontent that has seethed within the lower echelons of the armed forces since the 1986 ouster of dictator Jean- Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier. Two weeks ago, the unrest exploded when noncommissioned officers toppled Lieut. General Henri Namphy as Haiti's leader and installed Lieut. General Prosper Avril as President. The coup grew out of grievances that ranged from bad food to military tolerance of the murder of civilians by thugs and members of the Tonton Macoutes, the secret police who terrorized Haitians during the 28-year dynasty begun by Duvalier's father Francois ("Papa Doc") Duvalier...