[piaste]

> But I don't think you can limit people's wealth and not call it communism.

Is that your actual objection? It sounds more like a smear by association.

Famously, the USA under Eisenhower had a top marginal tax rate of 90% on income over $200K - "merely" a few million dollars in modern-day money.

Was the Eisenhower administration Communist? If it wasn't, would it have become Communist if they had gone a bit further and added a marginal rate of 99% for income over oh, let's say $20M (a few hundred million dollars nowadays)?

I think if you traveled back in time and proposed such a bill, the reaction from folks like Senator McCarthy would not have been "that's Communism" but more likely "that's a ridiculous and useless bill, how could anyone ever accumulate that much personal wealth? It would be absurd".

[mythrwy]

Andrew Carnegie was worth something like 300 billion USD (today, inflation adjusted). So that level of wealth was not unknown by the time of the Eisenhower administration.

[piaste]

Good point!

On that note, trust-busting is also worth discussing as a counter to the modern concentration of wealth.