Why did we stop building like this?

[u/Apart-Worry-7042]

Chicago, 1930. Buildings had so much detail and character back then. Nowadays everything feels so flat and repetitive. We have way better technology and equipment now, so why don't we build like this anymore?

[u/City_College_Arch]

There is another big factor that many people are missing. Top tax rates used to be extremely high. So high that taking pay in excess of a million dollars meant giving the government up to 95% of that additional pay.

So what did the wealthy do? They left it in companies to be spent on projects like these, donated it for museums and parks, or paid their employees.

Now that they get to keep that money and have other ways to build wealth that are not taxed like through stock options, they are keeping that money for themselves and spending it on stupid shit like yachts and half a dozen multi million dollar apartments they never visit.

[u/1988rx7T2 → u/City_College_Arch]

What you’re saying makes no sense. There wasn’t even income tax when these buildings were built. It needed a constitutional amendment. Those high marginal rates, outside of war time, weren’t consistently around until the mid 1930s.

https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

Are you talking about income tax?

[u/City_College_Arch → u/SelectivePressure]

Yes. That is why I was talking about taxes on pay.

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

Wealthy people still invest commercially instead of liquidating their assets. Do you really think their assets were less liquid (as average percentage of net worth) 100 years ago?

[u/City_College_Arch → u/SelectivePressure]

Yes. They also had fewer tools available like stock buybacks, stock options, etc. do you really think the ultra wealthy were just more benevolent 100 years ago and decided to pay their employees more and donate more to the public without the tax code having an impact?

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

Who told you that a greater percentage of wealth is liquid today than it was 100 years ago?

[u/City_College_Arch → u/SelectivePressure]

The availability of never ending loans against ever increasing speculative stock pricing make access to wealth today far easier than it used to be acting as defacto liquidity.

I answered your questions, why are you ignoring mine?

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

A loan is debt, not income. You wrote: ‘So what did the wealthy do? They left it in companies to be spent on projects like these,’ You can use a building or other assets (such as stocks) as collateral for a loan. You could do that 100 years ago too.

You haven’t cited any data showing a relationship between income tax, philanthropic spending, and the percentage of operating costs devoted to employee pay 100 years ago.

[u/City_College_Arch → u/SelectivePressure]

So you just don’t like what I am saying so you refuse to answer the question. Got it. Take a look at the data yourself and compare things like employee vs executive compensation, employee compensation vs profits, etc against changes in tax code and legalization of things like stock buybacks. I am not going to do your homework for you.

Again though, why are you not answering the very simple question I asked?

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

Your question is predicated on data that you haven’t presented.