{"id":7072,"date":"2024-04-06T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2024-04-06T07:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ch.jfdi.cc\/?p=7072"},"modified":"2024-04-06T10:00:06","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T07:00:06","slug":"high-tax-rates-caused-too-much-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ch.jfdi.cc\/?p=7072","title":{"rendered":"High Tax Rates Caused Too Much Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we were composing our history of the income tax, Taxes Have Consequences<\/em>, we kept finding evidence of corporate art purchases from the 1950s through the 1970s. Office parks and towers employing thousands were full of art, much of it modernist, the new style. Then in the 1990s, corporations sold off all the stuff, rocking the market. Symphonies, operas, and dance companies\u2014supporting them richly was a common mark of corporate citizenship in the post-World War II decades. Modern corporate architecture, and not only brutalism, did what critic Hilton Kramer once said of the Guggenheim museum: it succeeded in drawing attention to itself.<\/p>\n

All of this art, culture, and architecture had significant tax consequences. The federal corporate tax rate was 52 percent through 1963, and still 48 percent thereafter. Outlays for culture came off the top line on the income statement, reducing the bottom line. The government picked up half the bill for such expenses, and the company got the stuff and the experiences in full.<\/p>\n

Employees, for their part, faced marginal federal tax rates up to 91 percent through 1963 and 70 percent thereafter. Once they reached a certain degree of money income, they preferred their compensation in-kind. Chilling in an office with avant-garde design notes, getting gratis tickets to the symphony that the company supported, heading to work in a building of aesthetic seriousness\u2014these experiences upped the sense of significance of corporate work for an individual, who paid no taxes on the thrill. The IRS, for its part, was far less likely to challenge a high culture deduction than for some alternative low-brow deduction. Money plowed into culture.<\/p>\n

It is remarkable how cultural the nation was back then. Modern art was an imperative topic. Caring about classical music was another must. An Updike character of the 1970s once said that women love New York City, \u201cGod knows why.\u201d He speculated it was because the rectangular street grids and vertical buildings set them off, as in a picture frame. That\u2019s the way corporate employees, execs and minions alike, routinely felt in their official digs in the corporate heyday through 1980. Corporate life bled Culture, made people props within it.<\/p>\n

After the 1980s, dressing down, utilitarian workplaces, not giving a hoot about symphonies, seeing modern art as a mediocre scam, the self-marginalization of art via politicization, the disappearance of corporate bragging about philanthropy, all these became the new standard. The corporate tax rate went down to 34 and then 21 percent. Tax deductions for art, etc., became far less valuable. And for their part, the employees now wanted the cash. The top tax rate for individuals went as low as 28 percent. Most interesting art-bedecked offices and the aura of the avant-garde? No thanks anymore, they said, I\u2019ll take the cash since I keep so much more of it after-tax. The objet d\u2019art<\/em> selloffs commenced.<\/p>\n

Corporations paid the last compensation dollars to their employees in-kind when tax rates were high, and a major method they chose was culture. When tax rates went down, the preference for all parties was to exchange culture for cash.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it was too much of a swing, from culture, Culture, CULTURE (as Tom Wolfe basically put it) in the old era to off-the-rack decor in the office, business casual, work-from-home pajamas, and culture being a niche product for after-hours, our world since the 1980s. What everyday corporate employee today feels pressure to have opinions about high art and music, indeed to be a cool enthusiast? Amazing to say, this was standard fifty years ago.<\/p>\n

Big government creates problems coming and going. The way the tax take stayed at 16 percent of GDP in the 1950s, even though every tax rate was above that level, was through deductions, and who could raise an issue about corporate citizenship in supporting culture? It elevated the populace after all. How many corporate worker bees had to feign interest in art and philharmonics, as Norman Rockwell all but declared in his painting of The Connoisseur<\/em> (1962).
\nThe escape out of all that was probably overdone. When tax rates fell, people dropped culture like a hot potato. Punk and grunge were the sounds of culture when suddenly everybody evacuated interest and energy from it, in favor of startups and entrepreneurialism at long last, now that you could keep the money.
\nThe equilibrium position is surely in between somewhere. A productive venture for the twenty-first century would be to pound tax rates down and see how culture might organically mature. In the old cultural salad days, artists to their credit would say they were unduly put-upon. Why does everybody insist on our being grand oracles was their basic question. Critic Clement Greenberg said that one of the reasons art went to abstraction was that artists did not know how to respond to an epidemic of importuning from the whole society. You want us to tell you something very important, and at scale? We might not be totally up to that, so we will just represent basic structures. Society can fill in the rest with the values it works up as its own responsibility. Tax-rate cuts can play a part in such a project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Corporate art purchases were common from the 1950s through the 1970s, with corporations supporting symphonies, operas, and dance companies as a mark of corporate citizenship. These expenses were tax-deductible, with the government covering half the cost. Employees preferred compensation in-kind, such as office spaces with avant-garde design or tickets to cultural events, as they faced high marginal tax rates. However, after the 1980s, as tax rates decreased, employees preferred cash over cultural benefits, leading to a decline in corporate support for culture. The shift from a culture-focused corporate environment to a more utilitarian one was influenced by changes in tax rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[302,5057,2928,3492,4039,924,186,1512,616,2429,33,3740,5222,4498,4919,5099,5224,303,2842,2190,358,203,3210,3343,1610,3644,696,415,658,2294,3398,899,2628,875,699,393,4593,4408,3335,3775,4753,720,343,2543,1827,1358,1065,5223,4598,4556,1183,618,380,293,1100,18],"class_list":["post-7072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-art","tag-artists","tag-aura","tag-bill","tag-building","tag-buildings","tag-business","tag-cash","tag-citizenship","tag-classical-music","tag-companies","tag-compensation","tag-corporate-art-purchases","tag-corporate-tax","tag-corporate-tax-rate","tag-corporations","tag-cultural-shift","tag-culture","tag-dance","tag-decline","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-escape","tag-events","tag-evidence","tag-expenses","tag-gdp","tag-government","tag-history","tag-income","tag-income-tax","tag-interest","tag-money","tag-museum","tag-music","tag-new-york","tag-office","tag-philanthropy","tag-pound","tag-pressure","tag-project","tag-rest","tag-scam","tag-startups","tag-statement","tag-support","tag-tax","tag-tax-consequences","tag-tax-deductions","tag-tax-rate","tag-taxes","tag-top","tag-us","tag-war","tag-women","tag-world"],"acf":{"keyphrase":"","keywords":"","sourceimg":"","country-category":""},"yoast_head":"\nHigh 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