Just think of what it was like when people were paying 90% income tax!
I can remember what it was like then. That was in the 50s.
I lived around very wealthy people.
For example the McKelveys lived about 100' from my house. (their fortune was from Penn Central Railroad and heavy industry FYI)
They lived in a thirty plus room Scottish style mansion (built in 1860) with an 8 carriage house and about a hundred acre estate overlooking the Delaware River, complete with manicured gardens, goldfish cement ponds, statuary and so forth.
They had full time gardeners, live in servants, chauffer and so forth.
And incidetnly these weren't the richest people ih town or anything. The McKelveys were just the closest millionaires to my home. College Hill in Easton, PA had hundreds of homes and estates like these.
STill do, too. You can check them out on google earth if you're interested.
Yeah, they were really struggling when the tax rate was 90%, weren't they?
FYI, the very wealthy tended to be very nice people, though.
They let ragamuffin kids like me play on their estates even though we were savages who destroyed their perfect gardens. (my mother got a LOT of flowers I purloined from their gardens for example)
Their gardeners hated us but the old lady who lived there was very kind to us kids.
The rich were still plenty rich back when the income tax rate was 90%, believe me.
The upper middle and middle classes did quite well too.
You know who was really poor though, back then?
The old people who were no longer working.
Many of their careers had been destroyed during the depression (during the time when they should have been making money)n and by the time the economy turned around they were too old to be rehired.
