If it is one thing I learned, the definition of "wealthy" tends to roll down hill. Here is an excerpt from Krugman....
Consider the question of tax rates on the wealthy. The modern American
right, and much of the alleged center, is obsessed with the notion that
low tax rates at the top are essential to growth. Remember that Erskine
Bowles and Alan Simpson, charged with producing a plan to curb deficits,
nonetheless somehow ended up listing “lower tax rates” as a “guiding
principle.”
Yet in the 1950s incomes in the top bracket faced a marginal tax rate of
91, that’s right, 91 percent, while taxes on corporate profits were
twice as large, relative to national income, as in recent years. The
best estimates suggest that circa 1960 the top 0.01 percent of Americans
paid an effective federal tax rate of more than 70 percent, twice what
they pay today.
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