The beginning of the end for the American middle class was Reagan
Reagan promptly cut income taxes on the very rich from 70% down to 27%. Corporate tax rates were also
cut so severely that they went from representing over 33% of total federal tax receipts in 1951 to less than 9% in 1983 (they're still in that neighborhood, the lowest in the industrialized world).
The result was devastating. Our government was suddenly so badly awash in red ink that Reagan doubled the tax paid only by people earning less than $40,000/year (FICA), and then began borrowing from the huge surplus this new tax was accumulating in the Social Security Trust Fund. Even with that, Reagan had to borrow more money in his 8 years than the sum total of all presidents from George Washington to Jimmy Carter combined.
Our bridges are falling apart (among other things), and its Ronald Reagan's fault. A few hours before the bridge collapsed in Minnesota, a news release landed (among hundreds) in my email inbox. It was from the right-wing "Heartland Institute" and a Minnesota conservative group calling itself...
www.commondreams.org
Republicans love to cut funding. Schools, prisons, poor people, infrastructure. They'll cut cut cut services that help poor and middle people. Never corporate welfare. And their cuts won't solve anything. But they will have saved Rich people more money. And they will NEVER go along with undoing the Reagan/Bush/Trump tax breaks.