In 1960, the top marginal income tax rate in the United States was 91%. The economy was booming, the middle class was expanding, and the American Dream was a lived reality for millions. Today, the top rate is 37% — and billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos often pay a lower effective tax rate than teachers and nurses.
This is not an accident. It is the result of decades of deliberate tax policy designed by and for the wealthy — carried interest loopholes that let hedge fund managers pay lower rates than their secretaries, stepped-up basis rules that let the ultra-wealthy pass fortunes to heirs tax-free, and a corporate tax system riddled with loopholes that allows profitable companies to pay zero in federal taxes.
A 70% marginal tax rate on income over $10 million would affect only the top fraction of one percent of earners, and it would raise hundreds of billions in revenue over a decade. A wealth tax on fortunes over $50 million — two cents on every dollar above that threshold — would begin to address the obscene concentration of wealth that has hollowed out American democracy.
No one earns a billion dollars. They extract it. Billionaire wealth is accumulated through low wages, tax avoidance, political influence, and the labor of workers who never see a fair share of what they create. Taxing that wealth is not punishing success — it is funding the public goods that make success possible in the first place.