I agree with the gist of these comments; all I meant by that bit put that bit was to make the argument about the inevitability of inequality's increase a more conservative one. It seems obvious (to me) that redistribution, maybe in the form of basic income, is an inevitable result of this 'natural law' of increasing inequality.
That said: people did not pay those rates in the 50s[1]:
The Internal Revenue Service reckoned that the effective rate of tax in
1954 for top earners was actually 70 percent.
Or lower. Marc Linder, a law professor at the University of Iowa, has
shown that a more comprehensive interpretation of income that
includes capital gains suggests the real effective tax rate for millionaires
was 49 percent in 1953. The effective rate dropped throughout the
decade, reaching 31 percent by 1960. That 31 percent is just slightly
higher than the 29 percent level a Congressional Budget Office report
figures the average effective tax for the top quintile will be in 2014.
Just to be clear, lisper and I were talking about marginal tax rates, not overal effective rates. Only for the very highest earners does the effective rate approach the top marginal rate.
That said: people did not pay those rates in the 50s[1]:
---[1] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-f...