The Republican tax bill is not totally awful

There are a few bright spots

House Speaker Paul Ryan.
(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Here is a sentence I never thought I would find myself typing in 2017: The Republican Party has decided that we should raise taxes on rich people.

Not by a lot, mind you. The effective 46 percent rate introduced in the new GOP tax reform bill is nowhere near the 70 percent top level that was not considered onerous under President Nixon — or anywhere near the 91 percent of the Eisenhower era, those halcyon days when millionaires were still very largely modest boring people who liked to go sailing on weekends and feed their children milk toast during their vacations from Philips Exeter rather than tech savants in hoodies who think that we are all living inside a computer program. But it gets close to the 50 percent Reagan thought reasonable enough at the end of his administration.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.