Just in case any of you libruls have forgotten, America before Ronald Reagan was a Commie cesspool of poverty and oppression, unlike the sparkling capitalist paradise with streets of paved with gold and happy children dancing around chocolate fountains that it has been since the rich were freed from the shackles of paying taxes. Just to edumacate you crazy libruls who still don't know this, I have compiled a series of photos comparing the horrific nightmare that was America 1945 to 1980 with the awesome land of milk and honey it has been since then, with the prevailing tax rates for reference.
During the 1950s, under the Republican Marxist dictator Dwight "Komrade" Eisenhower, the top marginal income tax rate was 91%, there were two dozen brackets, and the lowest rate was 20%! Look at this chart for 1955:
As you can imagine, America was an impoverished Soshullist hellhole in the 1950s. Here we see a typical slice of life in the horrific Commie 1950s wasteland:
Below are emaciated youth lining up at the local Kommissary to receive their meager rations - you can see from their thousand-yard stares and bedraggled appearance that they are living very hard lives. Note the bland, soulless Communist architecture of the building behind them, and the rusted horse-and-buggy transportation they were forced to rely upon. Not for the faint of heart:
Here we see a typically destitute 1950s American family huddled around the fire for warmth in their spartan living quarters, with pure despair on their faces over the confiscatory tax rates that took away jobs and made them slaves to Soshullism:
Crime-ridden 1950s Harlem, full of welfare zombies, homelessness, and poverty - as you can see, the people are ducking for cover under the constant hail of bullets:
The snarled traffic nightmare of transportation on the inefficient, government-run Interstate Highway system built by the Eisenhower politburo - note the cracked and uneven road surface, chaotic driving, broken road signs, and rusted heaps traveling the roads:
While traveling - no doubt under orders from the local Party apparatchik, since I am assured by Grover Norquist that people were not allowed to travel in the 1950s without permission - 1950s Americans would have to stop by the roadside to forage for food in the trash piles and junk heaps that lined the road:
As you can imagine, these tax rates were the death of commerce. Ever since the Communist revolution of Franklin Roosevelt, cracked, worn, and abandoned shopping centers had dotted the land, sitting like totems of left-wing failure and degeneracy throughout the 1950s:
A typically grim Communist housing block where the sad and desperate workers were forcibly domiciled under Komrade Eisenhower - try not to weep at the thousand-yard stares of the family in the second photo:
The government-regulated entertainment of the era was a thick soup of left-wing propaganda and authoritarianism, as exemplified by movies like these:
Culture became increasingly closed-minded and stagnant during this period, with music limited to military marches and heartless, state-approved propaganda songs - you can hear the hopelessness, fear, and lack of energy:
The grim reality of their tax-burdened lives had made people pessimistic, as shown in these dark visions of the future in popular culture:
Now let's jump ahead to the 1960s, when Soshullism is in full swing, although taxes have gone down somewhat. Chart:
Despite the tax decrease, America is still largely an impoverished cesspit of Commie horrors, hellish living conditions, decrepit infrastructure, and suffocated commerce in the 1960s:
Emblematic of the social and economic decay of Soshullism in the 1960s was Detroit, Michigan - just look at this trash-strewn, Soviet nightmare of a city:
And, of course, with all the tax money being gobbled up funding welfare queens and drug addicts, there was no money for defense and high-tech development in the 1960s, as evidenced by the antiquated technology on display in the US Armed Forces at the time:
A case in point of the ineptitude, inefficiency, and corruption of Big Gubmint was the Apollo program, sending rickety, poorly-designed crap a few feet in the air a couple of times:
Disgusted taxpayers looking on in revulsion as Neil Armstrong lands on the Moon at their expense:
However, as the 1970s came around and evolved, the reductions in the tax rate from the previous decade had had time to work their free market magic without being reversed - thanks to the moderating influence of centrist President Richard Nixon - so there were signs of hope on the horizon for the enslaved taxpayers:
Moreover, the genius of the free market had begun to peek out from under the Communist shadow in the late 1970s:
Music and culture began to show the first signs of advancing now that taxpayers could feel their burden getting a bit lighter:
The first hints of real optimism began to appear in popular culture as people started to realize the potential of the free market, and began to think about the great futures awaiting them:
The world had pitied the United States of America from 1945 to 1980, and looked on us with sad compassion at our high tax rates. But finally, in 1981, when Americans had had enough of taxes, came Ronald Reagan - heroic tax liberator come to end our long night of world-class education, infrastructure, middle-class dominance, and the ugly American culture of optimism. Americans wanted more of the free market genius shown above: The Pet Rock, the Ford Pinto, the AMC Gremlin, and Disco music. Welcome to the 1980s, the beginning of capitalist paradise in America.
Below is the chart for 1988, after the full effect of Ronald Reagan's heroic tax cutting program - just two tax brackets, with the top being 28%: Less than a third of the 1950s Communist cesspool rate.
As you can imagine, with income tax rates virtually obliterated, and the lazy bum moochers no longer able to suckle so much at the welfare teat, America was booming both economically and culturally by the late 1980s. Here we see various urban landscapes which in previous decades had been Commie hellholes transformed into free market paradises, with everything shiny and new, unlike in the 1950s and 1960s:
Here we see the happy, energetic, productive denizens of the Reagan era going about their lives in pursuit of commerce:
American factories were humming in the 1980s thanks to Reagan's supply-side tax policies:
The free market of the 1980s was just brimming with brilliant ideas and forward-looking new designs:
The newly liberated low-tax economy had created a whole new sense of purpose and optimism in America, as exemplified by new youth groups that were springing up in cities all across the country:
And the influence of the free market on culture could not have been more profound, leading to what conservatives everywhere agree to have been the greatest song of all time:
In addition, even more optimistic visions of the future were brought about by this free market paradise of the 1980s than in the late 1970s. Science fiction was filled with such inspirational prophecies:
God, I sure wish we could go back to the 1980s economy instead of the 1950s and 1960s economies, don't you?
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The moral of the story, folks, is that life with tax rates FAR higher than today at every level is pretty much the same as the middle-class lifestyle we all hope for, except that it's much broader-based, with awesome schools, safe communities, and people having hope for the future. Anytime some Republican or libertardian nutjob insists that 5% or 10% or 20% tax increases on just the wealthy from the rock-bottom rates they currently enjoy would turn America into Communist Bulgaria, just show them this.