I think the fact that we got through the depression without too many shots fired (Upton Sinclair be damned) is an indication that we're still in a place where gradual, gentle change can accomplish everything we need. And by "gentle" I mean "nobody gets their lives rekt." Trump wants to knock that 40% down to 15%. It makes the counterproposal of kicking it back up to 65% seem damn near reasonable by comparison. That top rate? It applies to people earning more than $400k. Trump wants to save 'em $100k (minimum) a year. Kicking it the other way would cost 'em $200k (minimum) a year. Yeah - larcenous. Yeah - confiscatory. But fuckin'A son you still got $200k a year.
I'm trained to read the captions before clicking on a figure, I guess, and when I read "Trump wants to knock that 40% down to 15%" below a thumbnail'd line plot, my first instinct was that you were talking about his approval rating. Before I could realize that I'd made a mistake, my kneejerk reaction was "ha, YEAH he does", and I figured that you were about to build a decent case for it. lol. I had no idea the wealthy were taxed so heavily during/after the great depression. Obviously, they found some tax loopholes and were able to make sure the trickle down effect was still going on, otherwise we would've failed to recover. Reductionism bundled into a joke, hilarious. Higher estate taxes for the extreme upper echelons, anyone? Seems like a no-brainer. Nobody needs to wake up one day with 100 million more dollars, that seems kinda stupid*. Unless the estate was worth, say, 10 billion dollars. Even then, it's kinda weird to me. And Trump's new tax plan eliminates the estate tax, of course. * of course, I would be willing to make exceptions, but fuck all of this Cayman-island-Swiss-bank-wealth-hoarding bullshit.