Angry Citizen said:
Labour (UK) is also a member of Socialist International. Anyone who claims they're "far left" is just plain wrong. Social democracy and democratic socialism are two very different things; please learn what you're talking about. It is impossible to advocate both at the same time.
They're kissing cousins, and yes one can advocate both at the same time as they are pretty much different variants of the same thing unless one wants to switch to communism.
According to this link, the Parti Socialisti supports both:
http://www.parties-and-elections.eu/france.html
Fine. Don't like that? The highest tax bracket was in the low-to-mid 70s during Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. In other words, the bracket was at or above what the "uber-socialists" in France want to raise it to, for at least thirty of the most productive and prosperous years in American history.
You folks really need to learn the nuances of politics before making broad, sweeping statements about left wing ideology. Commies, socialists and liberals, oh my!
What that shows is that the U.S. had a very confiscatory top income tax rate during the time. And calling them "thirty of the most productive and prosperous years in American history" is over-simplifying. You have to remember that you had:
1) Europe rebuilding after having been bombed to oblivion, which allowed the U.S. to dominate economically (and some countries adopting socialism like the UK at the time, thus stagnating economically and thus not providing competition)
2) A huge industrial base that had been built up in the U.S. from during the war
3) Infrastructure from the New Deal that allowed whole areas of the country that had previously been under-developed to develop into booming, thriving economies
4) Also the birthrate had declined during the Depression, so by the 1950s, men coming of age found jobs readily available.
5) Development of the Interstate Highway System, which had a massive impact on the development of towns, cities, and the country's overall economic growth
6) A massive amount of research and development in science and technology that had been conducted during WW2 that then spilled over into the private sector
7) Continual massive investment in R&D of science and technology due to the Cold War defense budget
8) The U.S. space program, which was probably the all-time greatest government investment in R&D for science and technology in human history---the economic benefits from the space program are almost unfathomable. The modern world and the modern economy as we know it would not exist if not for the things developed in the space program that then were adopted by the private sector.
9) It's a lesser-known thing, but after WWII, the United States stole an enormous amount of patents and intellectual property from Germany --
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804717613/?tag=pfamazon01-20
So I mean it wasn't as if the U.S. just had high tax rates and prospered greatly, the prosperity was due to quite a few factors that the modern U.S. will likely not experience again (our economic competition being bombed out, rural areas getting lots of infrastructure that allowed them to develop economically, massive government investment in R&D, etc...).
By the 1970s, the U.S. economy was suffering stagflation, and then when foreign competitors finally began to give domestic U.S. companies real competition (something they weren't used to), it was disastrous initially for them and then forced them to get their act together.
