Safe travels, Aloha.
https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/
I think this is the link you are searching for. However, all of their bullet points confirm what I'm saying. By bullet point:
1. Not many Americans reached the top bracket because income disparity was held in check.
2. They're simply stating that the tax code was more progressive, so income was taxed at lower levels on the way up.
3. They say there is less income reported because of avoidance. Either people were cheating, or they were finding ways to spend their money to avoid taxes, i.e. consumption.
What seems to be lost, is the argument over effective rates is from the perspective of collected revenues by our government. Even though it was six percent higher back then, that's not the point I'm making. I'm saying there were far greater consequences resulting from the changes in our tax code. Why did manufacturing peak in 1979? Why did income disparity start to rapidly increase in 1987? And obviously I'm arguing wealth disparity arose from top earners keeping more money every time they passed "Go" for forty plus years. How do you, or anyone else, explain it? We have people who literally make a billion dollars a year and pay a less effective rate than their secretary. Why wasn't that happening in the 50's?
Ultimately, I'm not arguing for a return to those levels. I don't think increasing income rates alone will reverse all the damage that has been done. I do expect Reagan Republicans to man up and admit the role that their tax policies played in our society. As I've stated before, if Reaganomics worked so well, why is today's GOP trying to MAGA, like it was in the 50's?
Edit to add: We have an investment to consumption problem and adding brackets to the top would ultimately help that situation, along with some sort of capital gains being incorporated into regular income, or at least made progressive, like ordinary income. Maybe capital gains needs it's own schedule.
if you allow govt to be bought, 100% chance it will be.
and it was.
don't over think this, it isn't rocket science.
those at the top who control how the revenues from business get divided up between all those involved who created the revenues, will and do keep as much for themselves as they can until forced otherwise.
in the past there were two entities that could force otherwise, unions and govt.
unions did so though collective bargaining, govt through taxation and min wage.
ownership solved all the "sharing the wealth collectively produced" problems by buying the govt, which allowed them to do away with unions, avoid the taxation, and halt min wage gains. (and other labor pool manipulation, such as offshoring and importing low wage labor).
so now, not only do they keep a disproportionate share because they can, but also use their indirect control of the Fed to print money on the country's Visa card, and plow all the borrowed money, directly or indirectly, into the market benefiting only the ownership/investment class through market prices manipulated through flooding the market with the borrowed/printed money.
then the gains from the manipulated market also get plowed back into the market in a vicious cycle where the money never so much as ever touches the working classes hands.
when the rule makers, ie the govt, make all the rules to benefit one side, this is what we get and will always get.
only way to reverse the trend is for the non investor class to retake what has been effectively a complete takeover of our govt on everything economic by the moneyed interests, because they control all the money and are allowed to buy the rule makers with it.
the unalterable algorithm of capitalism the force works no other way, nor can it, absent an equal or greater counter force pushing back.
translation, only the working class taking back enough say in the rules, can reverse the trend.
if i get to make all the rules, i can beat Tiger Woods in golf and Lebron in bball.
rules matter.. one side is making all the rules.. thus the other side has no chance.