"A generation ago, progressive cycles of deficit spending and taxation had put the top tax bracket in the US at 90%." This is incorrect. The 90% tax rate (and

"A generation ago, progressive cycles of deficit spending and taxation had put the top tax bracket in the US at 90%." This is incorrect. The 90% tax rate (and other notably high tax rates from that period) were temporary measures explicitly enacted to discourage war profiteering: "The crisis of World War II led Congress to pass four excess profits statutes between 1940 and 1943. The 1940 rates ranged from 25 to 50 percent and the 1941 ones from 35 to 60 percent. In 1942, a flat rate of 90 percent was adopted, with a postwar refund of 10 percent; in 1943 the rate was increased to 95 percent, with a 10 percent refund." [1] These were not tax rates analogous to any of our normal, peacetime rates and they were not enacted as progressive policy measures. It is misleading and disingenuous to make any comparison between the tax rates we choose in modern peacetime which arise from political decisions about relatively progressive vs. regressive rates, etc., and these administrative rates designed to combat war profiteering and other behaviors related to a wartime economy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_profits_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_profits_tax