With the middle class rapidly diminishing, and poverty spreading to more and more of Americans, a trend since 1980, it is urgent that America go back to the tax policy that prevailed from 1936-1980.
From the time of the New Deal at its peak in the mid 1930s through the year of the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the US government, by its tax policy, created a growing and prosperous middle class, and while the wealthy complained about the tax rates, it did not harm them, but made a vast difference to the nation.
The marginal tax rate, meaning the tax rate above a fixed income, reached 70 percent from 1936 to 1951, and was raised further to 90 percent from 1951-1963, followed by a return to 70 percent from 1963-1980. It allowed a growing middle class to improve their life style and buy goods and services that could not have occurred without this small sacrifice by the wealthy.
Now, it has been proposed that the marginal tax rate go back up to 70 percent on incomes over $10 million, so notice this is not raising taxes on the first $10 million of income, and is not going to strip the top one percent of their wealth by any means.
The middle class dwindled once the tax rate was allowed to plummet under Ronald Reagan onward, and has led to an economy where former middle class people, who still think they are middle class, have to work second and third jobs, and both wife and husband must work full time, in order to struggle to remain in the lower middle class at best.
This is not good for the struggling middle class, and in the long run, is a detriment to the wealthy. The anger and bitterness over the unfairness of our tax policy endangers everyone.
Instead of keeping the tax rate at what it was, the wealthy have had three massive periods of tax cuts, under Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and now Donald Trump. It is time for that horrible tax policy to come to an end, as the wealthy do not need any more exploitation of the middle class and the poor to be on their necks.