[LS]

I'll do better than that. Look at my book, "The Entrepreneurial Adventure: A History of Business in the United States" (Harcourt, 2000), chap. 12 or 13. I go over all the impact of the Reagan era cuts. It was the 1982 cuts that brought the top rate down from 50% to 25%, but then, after four years (and Stockman's whine in Atlantic Monthly about "deficits"), the Dems persuaded Reagan that they needed to "close loopholes" to "make up revenue."

I mean, it's common sense that with those deficits in 1985, we were not about to get any more tax DECREASES. The "loopholes" that Reagan agreed to in the long run were quite harmful, but only to segments of the economy, not to everyone. Still, it was a tax increase.

[vbmoneyspender]

It was the 1982 cuts that brought the top rate down from 50% to 25%

I think you are wrong about this. Here is what the Prentice Hall Documents Library says, in part, about the Tax Reform Act of 1986:

Other features of the Tax Reform Act of 1986:

Tax cut. The top marginal tax rate on wealthiest individuals was reduced 44% (from 50% percent to 28%). The marginal rates for leass wealthy individuals were also reduced, but not by as high a percentage. Tax reductions were said by some critics to underly the massive mushrooming of the federal deficit during the Reagan administration.

Here is the link.