That's because income taxes on the wealthy are way too low, which incentivizes stuffing income into real estate, stocks, and bonds. Earn a million dollars wort

That's because income taxes on the wealthy are way too low, which incentivizes stuffing income into real estate, stocks, and bonds. Earn a million dollars worth of either earned or unearned income, and you pay either (simplistically) 39.6% on earned and 23.6% on unearned income. That's too f'n goddamn cheap. It encourages peopel to pay that tax and put it into one of the above, rather than take the risk by starting or growing a business and taking a tax deduction for business expenses. When the silent generation was in charge of things, income tax was never less than 75% for the top tax bracket, for over 40 years. And during that time there was massive private and public infrastructure being built, and we didn't have a $20 trillion national debt.