As a general rule, I find conversations about taxes to be silly. Everyone ALWAYS complains about taxes but everyone wants public services, whether they admit it or not and even when they don't realize it, there is a lot of self-delusion at play. There is a corollary effect where everyone thinks they're underpaid but are convinced that people who do services for them charge too much.
Are taxes high these days? Which taxes, municipal, state/provincial, income tax? Were they higher in the 1950s and 1960s where everyone was doing ok and there was less disparity in wealth and income. Did tax policy aid that, did it make it worse?
When a state/province downloads services to cities and brags about lowering taxes, is it just smoke up your ass? You still have to pay someone, don't you?
I've heard a lot of complaints about regulations and taxes and such over the last decade or two, but I'm not detecting much suffering on the part of the 1%, have you? Did forcing companies to clean the air and water hurt them much, because I'm having trouble seeing how it did. Maybe some of them suffered but tough shit, if you can't make a living without poisoning your neighbours, what good are you to anyone? Slave traders used to make good coin buying and selling human beings, but nobody misses them much any more.
Bottom line, the take-home pay of the middle class has stagnated since Reagan and has gotten worse since the 2008 crash. Spin it all you want, that's not a good thing and it was the policies introduced since the Reagan era that caused that to happen. It had to be, it wasn't the weather and it's not as if there was any shortage of investment capital in the world. There was always plenty of money to gamble in credit default swaps and fraudulent mortgage-backed securities.
Basically we have a culture full of sheeple who have fallen hook line and sinker for the stupid idea that if we're nice to the 1% and let them keep and horde all their wealth and facilitate that by cooperative laws and sell our public sphere to them, then they will look kindly on us and give us a few jobs. It didn't work for serfs during feudalism and it's not working now. Of course, it works for the 1% just fine.
(Rant over, time for lunch.)
Opposite to your thinking, inflation is the culprit and destroying the middle class, not the wealthy. Printing especially created the larger gap between rich and poor. As the government prints, assets mainly owned by wealthier people go up. Meanwhile, the value of the dollar decreases due to inflation. That affects the poor and middle class more because they are living on fixed income like Social Security and a paycheck from week to week. Since they have little assets, their wealth decreases.
You see this now with all the printing. Look at the stock market and real estate? It's booming making the rich richer. The Fed's printing is helping to do that. And when the Democrats pass more printing above the $1.9 T, the rich will get even richer. The little $1400 payments are soon consumed by the average family. Meanwhile, the rich's assets go up all caused by Democrat and Republican spending and printing.
Taxes are also recessive and are also responsible for the decrease wealth of middle and lower classes. 60-70 years ago, SS was only 3%. NOw it's 6.2% plus the employer's similar 6.2%. There's a discussion going on to raise Social Security taxes. We also have Medicare at 1.45%. Add in higher local taxes, property taxes, sales, etc, these are the taxes that affect middle and lower classes the most, just like VAT taxes in Europe. They're recessive, not progressive. Both parties have been responsible for this mess because neither side is serious about balancing the budget and lowering spending. It's easier to print. But in the end, inflation and higher taxes are destroying the middle class.
