Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America

by Kurt Andersen

And even though the Democrats controlled the House with huge majorities throughout the 1980s and early ’90s and won the Senate back for six years, the federal government consistently treated business and the rich spectacularly well. The top income tax rate for the wealthiest was cut from 70 to 50 percent in 1982. It would’ve been prudent to stop there for a while and see how that worked out. But no: in the second Reagan term, the top rate was cut again to 38.5 percent, then once more to 28 percent—along with a large reduction of the income threshold for the highest bracket, which meant that somebody making $1 million or $10 million a year would now be taxed at the same rate that a teacher or plumber was taxed on everything they earned above the equivalent of $40,000. The cut in the top tax rate on profits from selling stocks was also cut in half between 1976 and 1982, another enormous boon to the rich, since three-quarters of those gains go to the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans.