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[JHB]

15. Those ARE adjusted for inflation. In the acutal 1955 numbers...

...the top rate kicked in at $400,000 for a married couple filing jointly, $200K for single, and $300K for the "head of household" category. And it wouldn't be 90%, it would be 81 at the top levels, only 11 % above the 1980 top rate, which kicked in at a much lower level.

And I have no problem with negotiating and dickering over what better rates would be. There's nothing inherently correct about these ones. But neither is it the sort of "airy-fairy ivory-tower liberal ideology" RWers would like to claim, it's the policy that we had in this country for decades, during a time of prosperity, operating as one of the tools that let the prosperity extend widely and not just all shoot to the top.

I don't propose this as a solution, but I do propose it as a starting point.