I would agree anyone who is conservative leaning doesn't think taxes should be used to reduce inequality. The basic premise of the article that started the thread is, throughout history, the only way inequality has been reduced is through violence or plague. I would like to think the US is forward looking enough to engineer social change in a way that doesn't require a significant reduction in population.
Inequality has been growing since 1980.
http://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality
This is what tax rates have been doing:
Back in the conservative glory days of the 1950s - 1980s, the country accomplished that with high taxes on the top 0.1% and union membership was strong. If you are opposed to raising taxes, what mechanism does society have?
Maybe it is a progressive liberal snowflake idea to think there must be a way to accomplish this and go back to a time when all income brackets enjoyed the gains of the economy at a similar rate. I am not saying people in the 1% didn't work harder, are smarter, got luckier, or were born well and don't deserve their place.
Surely, even far right conservatives, see a problem when the bottom 20% has seen no a change in real income for almost 40 years, is making 20% more money, and the top 5% are making 75% more. To put it yearly; the annual raise for the bottom 20% is 0, the median is 0.5%, and the top 5% are getting a 2% annual raise.
Raising taxes on the top 1% doesn't necessarily mean the government is the one taking the windfall either. If you are a business owner being taxed obscenely, maybe you start giving to a tax deductible charity or pay your employees more to reduce your tax burden.
Yeah that all worked great in the 50's, in a completely different world. Globalization, tech, and automation have very significantly changed how businesses work since then. You now have companies like Facebook with a market cap of $446Bn that only has 17,000 employees. That's over $26,000,000 per employee. If you divide again by the P/E ratio of 38 that's $690,402 in earnings per employee. It makes sense these employees would be paid more than employees in the 50's, as there was nothing like this back then. Facebook doesn't even hire people in the bottom 20%, and probably not the bottom 40%, because they have no need for them.
Skills now are even more valuable than they were in the 50's compared to manual labor and putting in time. You can build a machine to do assembly line work cheaper than employing a person. So far you can't build a machine to design the assembly line. A single mechanic or two now can maintain the machinery to replace 10+ manual labor employees. It absolutely makes sense that the mechanic's salary would go up compared to 50 years ago, and the manual labor employees would stay the same. Someone who figures out a new way to optimize the algorithm for Facebook could benefit the company on the scale of millions of dollars. There was no comparable job to that in the 50's, and to expect that someone who works the checkout counter at Walgreens to see a pay increase similar to skilled labor is absurd.
Your plan to move away from corporate taxes, but toward personal taxes is tricky as well. What's to stop all of the high earners from simply moving to another country? The ultra high earners you're trying to target are going to avoid the vast majority of these taxes, and you'll end up taxing the lower earners more. Sure, you'll be able to tax the crap out of the doctor or lawyer making $400k/year living in Chicago, but the CEO who has $50 million in stock options is going to be living in Ireland and have a "summer home" in New York. Either that or he'll structure it so his salary isn't income, and structure his investments to avoid the wealth tax. Granted, even with the wealth tax he's looking at paying $250,000 of his $50 million (granted, every year) vs the $45 million he'd pay if it were income. He'll also have no problem buying all of the high end properties with his extra $45 million he saves and renting them out to people whose jobs require them to live here.
The other issue I have with your plan is the implication that tax rates somehow had a causal effect on our economic growth in the 50's and onward. Just because it didn't hurt in a post-war industrial boom doesn't mean it will work in a global tech based market. There are a lot of countries out there that are great to live in that don't tax nearly as aggressively as you line out here, and moving to them is easier than ever. It's entirely possible to be in a high level position in a company and communicate almost exclusively digitally, and occasionally with air travel.
As far as bringing back unions, that sounds like a great way to push even more manufacturing jobs out of the US. Unionizing the auto plants and increasing wages through collective bargaining? Time to move to the plant to Mexico. The US worker in 2017 isn't only competing with other US workers. They're competing with workers worldwide. Companies are willing to pay a premium for many jobs, but once the cost gets too high they can and will move elsewhere.