Actually, I provided references in the forms of linked text. Check out the chart on tax brackets and notice how ridiculously low they fell the minute Reagan took office. The one statistic that had no reference came (along with the other unreferenced parts of American History in the piece) from Michael Goodwin’s Economix, whom I noted in the big footnote at the end.

Some people have pointed out that my original interpretation of how tax brackets work was off, and I fixed that. Someone else pointed out that a big reason the rich were taxed so heavily back then was to encourage them to reinvest their money in our economy, rather than find ways to hide it from the IRS. Which is a good point and probably true, but still serves the basic point I was making, which is that we used to be a country who cared about circulating wealth and spreading it across different socioeconomic levels.

Just how much money we can reclaim through taxes is up for debate, as well as what we can achieve with that money. What’s not up for debate is the fundamental understanding that we used to have a lot more money in our social wallet, and now we don’t, and one big reason is very clear and easily proven: the rich are paying back a fraction of what they used to pay. I’m not really sure what your Atlas Shrugged counter-argument is, but I don’t really want to get into an Ayn Rand debate right now.