In 1980, I made $23,409 working at a grocery store

[thatdemguy]

78. yes the top rate was that high but the amount of deductions allowed was crazy

You could deduct every cent of interest paid on any loan, or even credit cards. So your car loan, credit cards everything that had interest was a deduction. It probably also lead to some of the inflation at the time. It meant buying a car at any interest rate did not matter as you got to deduct the interest. So a 5k car cost you 5k and interest was basically given back as a tax break. Everyone bought everything they could on credit, so the price was not as important.

What tax rates are on paper, when everything is a deduction really does not matter, they removed deductions and lowered the paper tax rate. What matters is the effective tax rate.

You can look up historical numbers on effective tax rates and they really have not changed in 50 years. Since 1979 the effective tax rate on the rich is with in 2% of what it was in 2005 per the below link. The lowest quintile has gone from 0% to neg 6.5 in 2005. The middle quintile which probably covers 90% of the middle class has gone from 7.5 to 3%.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/effective_rates_0.pdf]