What has changed?

pretty much nothing

oops now I do, moved it.

First off, politics please.

Second, you facts are completely fabricated.

Third, the highest income bracket in the country was over 90% from the mid 40's until the 1960's, our greatest economic expansion. You might have heard of something called the "American Dream". That was from that period.

Fourth, that level of taxation will never happen again. The super rich in this country have completely convinced the lower classes that low taxes on the rich are as American as Apple Pie and Baseball and that it actually benefits the middle class! See Joe the Plumber.

Not fabricated Obama said that about Bush.

Hmmm.. what's changed:

The rich got richer, while the middling and lower classes got poorer. Not a new phenomenon, but perhaps magnified by economic events of the last 4 years.

We learned that large financial institutions are the new untouchables.

We learned (hopefully) that both parties are jointly destroying the country.

Financial institutions learned strawman arguments, and that Americans can easily be used as their pawns. It's very easy to have Americans fight amongst themselves about petty political ideology rather than uniting against larger structural problems.

We learned the Fed can heavily manipulate markets by using government intervention, thus fooling people into believing that a real recovery is underway.

Hank the "American Dream" you speak was only able to be built because the rest of the civilized manufacturing world (ie Europe) had been torn asunder by 2 consecutive wars and we could hold the world ransom to our cost structure, that WAS from that period. WAS being the operative word, for Progressivism being all about the future I sure do here a lot of talk about the 40's-70's when the game was 180 degrees different than it is today. I don't remember hearing anyone bitching about high cost or evil big business when we where selling France a 5 dollar widget for 50 bucks.

If the Progressives actually did what they said they where going to do instead of being Repbub light by continuing (if not furthering) the war machine, extend the Bush tax cuts (which are really now the Obama cuts), and pander to Big Business (GE pissing all over the tax payer) then maybe people might be adept to a little more hope and change. If Obama had the ball to be as Left as he really is we might actually get to see what it was like, but when 7 of your 10 biggest donors are Oil Companies and Banks, you run around the world handing our free trade agreements like candy, tell me Barry-Care is the way to go then hand out waivers to all your buddies, and spend a billion dollars in Libya don't tell me you need more of my money.

Don't Hope for tax cuts when you have done zero change, Obama has been more Repub then Dem and it's still not working for us. Prove the money will goto helping AMERICANS, not the UN, not bombing poor brown skinned people somewhere, and not giving waivers to your union buddies with Barry-Care and then sending the middle class the bill.

JJFad - Well said!

"The super rich in this country have completely convinced the lower classes that low taxes on the rich are as American as Apple Pie and Baseball and that it actually benefits the middle class! See Joe the Plumber."

Dead on Hank.The super rich, through their stooges like the pill popper rust limbaugh have successfully convinced alot of people that if you tax the rich less they will reinvest the money they saved back into their companies or other business's. What a crock of shit.