[defertoreptar]

> and despite tax cuts for the wealthy wages haven't gone up.

Real median personal income went up almost 8% from the year before the tax cuts (2017) and 2019.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

[jfengel]

I'm referring to the long term policy of tax cuts, starting in the 1980s. The data set you link to has real median income (after inflation) going up by about 40% since 1975, under 1% per year.

That's not zero, but compared to GDP, the stock market, and other measures of overall economic health -- which have gone up by an order of magnitude or more -- the median is practically immobile.

And for much of that time, it was even more immobile. The median was $31k in 1997, and was $31k in 2014. It bottomed out at $30k in 2012; it has been rising since but that was almost two decades of complete stagnation -- while GDP rose and stock markets climbed.

[defertoreptar]

Here is an image that plots the effective capital gains rate from the 1950s to recent years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_Uni...

Let's analyze three periods:

1953-1985: no significant trend in effective capital gains tax

1985-1996: upward trend and higher capital gains tax

1996-2020: downward trend

Now let's compare those periods to real median family income (which tracks to 1953). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA672N

Annualized growth in real median income:

1953-1985: 1.8%

1985-1996: 0.8%

1996-2020: 2.0%

Real median income growth during lower capital gains tax policy was twice that of the period of higher capital gains tax policy.