Great article the only point that isn't so much valid comes down to the tax rate parts. The Effective Tax rate for individuals especially the poor has radically gone down over the year.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-average-federal-tax-rates-all-households

The issue is while you could have a 90% tax rate, you could write off interest on credit cards and other items across the board.

https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/

The issue is the progressive tax code has been broken since the late 1970s when we moved from the gold standard to the fiat based money system. The system never adapted and was fixed even though it was broken back in the 1980s.

Reagan started this snowball by basically taking the entitlements "slush" fund and using to fill up the holes and promised we would fix it later.

The rest is history and can be tracked via the national debt.

https://www.thebalance.com/national-debt-by-year-compared-to-gdp-and-major-events-3306287

The net net effect then has been a finanical engineering hot mess from DC where the true costs of living (food/fuel/energy/housing) is not accounted for in the COLA response to people, which is then used by companies to base raises.

When it became apparant things were going horribly sideways (80's with the crashes),. 90s with the Glass/Steagal repeal which setup the crashes in 2008 and led us to the huge financial situation we are in.

DC (both parties) led to a situation where we outsourced and even those with liberal and democrat views who could be pro-unions were led to believe free trade was the fix for everything since we were rich rich rich.

Meanwhile, most of Amercia slid into third world status which led to a cult of personality takeover. What is worse is these folks were shamed and ridiculed non-stop for being economically backwards (remember Seinfeld and 30 Rock? ... fly over county or Liz Lemon's Cleveland boyfriend?)

Companies outsourced to survive since if we take the adage of a possible $15/hr minimum floor, one could get a highly trained engineer to do considerable work in an outside country.

I learned about this personally in 2003/2004 when we had contracts outbid for serious engineering/architect/PS work by $15/hr asian workers who actually only stole IP.

So the failure to regulate and protect American workers especailly those in poor states is DC. They allowed the economic raping of people, and now we can't even make PPE equipment, medical saline, drugs, needles, and the basics. Hell Apple struggles to make computers because we struggle to make the screws.

Every DC incumbent and their solution has failed. The progressive tax code has failed to collect sufficient revenue alone in the 21st century to the tune of $900 billion a year on average not including the costs of COVID. We don't export or make goods in sufficient quantity to counter the imbalances of the imports, our cost of labor far exceeds those of the world, and there are not enough "private" based workers to create the tax revenue needed to fund teachers, police, and other activities.

Folks need to remember public folks paying taxes are not creating new tax revenue sources. They are recycling "tax" dollars from corporations and private individuals. They are the oasis and cactus in the desert of life providing real water to consume for the group.

Folks should be angry, the politicians in DC are like a heart surgeon that epically fails over and over and gets to continue to work on patients.

Lastly, every CBO and government assumption "assumes" the birth rate ratio is 2.1:1. All entitlement programs started with an assumption of 3:1. We have only had a birth rate be hit twice since 1973. So there are literally not enough workers to pay into the systems.

That means Gen X/Y/Z effectively have to give up their retirment due to the Baby Boomers not producing enough workers and consuming all the medical and entitlement tax dollars. Go look up and and you will see the cost of entitlements exceedsd all the tax revenue we collect. People state the military OMFG, but the problem is we have people living longer then entitlements expected to go. If we used the adage from the original New Deals. The retirement age should be 1-2 years higher then the average age of death, so 72-76 should be the new 62-66.

So while we have chosen certain rights and they should not be changed, people need to understand that failure to "make children" and have effective tax policy, and to regulate the external companies that dumped products and made American companies go bankrupt, do have a consequence.

Now we get to live it. The silver lining is maybe we can do this better with a better way, but the problem it can't be done with an us versus them culture.

Government has failed and will continue to fail Americans. When they do regulate they do it poorly. I believe it is time to cull the incumbents on both sides and even think about how we elect these folks.

Maybe jury duty type of selection, make people vote or get penalized, and fund the elections of these positions on government tax dollars and kick out the influence ...