...by progressively taxing high incomes. Even leaving aside the rates as a separate issue, there used to be many more brackets affecting high incomes. Here's a rough chart of the number of brackets historically, also listing the number of brackets that only affected incomes above $250,000 and $500,000 (converted to 2013 dollars):
In terms of how high up the income scale those brackets reached, it's "into the millions". Here's 1941-2013 (in 2013 dollars):
(see that little tan blip on the last one? That's the "socialism" Republicans scream about.)
In case you're wondering why I picked 1942 as a start date, it's purely for readability, thanks to my graphics skills or lack thereof. I need to figure out how to pull off skipping some intervals, because some of those inflation-adjusted brackets reach higher. Much higher:
We need hammer home to people just how radically the structure of taxation has changed since Reagan, and that it's part of the problem. There were certainly problems in the past, but one of the little-sung effects that it did have was it was a market-based incentive against trying to squeeze every last buck. It reinforced diminishing returns on simply extracting wealth, which made reinvestment a better use for that excess. Some would call that properly aligning incentives.
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