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Good thing we haven't, as it would crash the economy.

https://www.caltax.org/caltax-resources/california-tax-facts...

https://taxfoundation.org/publications/federal-tax-rates-and...

BTW, the government has built housing for the poor many times. They're called "The Projects". Usually they wound up being demolished after a few years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidized_housing_in_the_Unit...



Which is why the economy collapsed in the 1950s when the top marginal tax rate was 91%, and we’ve been living in a Mad Max wasteland ever since.


Very few people ever paid 91%. The reason was there were all sorts of tax shelters available at the time. This resulted in a lot of misallocation of resources. A lot of personal expenses could also be written off as a business expense, the most infamous of those was the "three martini lunch".

Reagan, in his deal to reduce the top marginal tax rates, also eliminated a vast swath of tax shelters and tax deductions.

More generally, the government consumed much less of the GDP in the 50s than it does today.




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