I understand what you're saying, but the tax system is not as progressive at the highest ends as you might think. Social Security Tax stops being collected onc

I understand what you're saying, but the tax system is not as progressive at the highest ends as you might think. Social Security Tax stops being collected once you've paid on ~$128k, so all your income above that is taxed at a much lower rate. Most wealthy people are able to significantly reduce their tax burden via deductions that aren't that helpful to "ordinary" folks as well, and the very wealthy can arrange for most of their income to come in the form of long-term capital gains taxed at only 15-20%. So in fact the US income tax system is relatively progressive up to the top bracket of $418k/$470k (single/joint), which just happens to be the bottom of the top 1%...